Restaurant Review: Kousine Peruvian Kitchen

1668 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton; 561-430-3337

In its purest expression, Peruvian ceviche is a simple dish with a limited number of ingredients—high-quality fish and lime are at its core. But making a tasty ceviche isn’t so easy. So, when I visited Kousine Peruvian Kitchen I was cautiously optimistic. Its Federal Highway location, just north of Glades, is its second outpost and opened about two years ago. Chef and owner Danny Kou shares his Peruvian heritage with a curated menu of dishes that accurately represent his country’s famous ceviche while introducing patrons to other, less popular dishes that are just as tempting.

Kousine offers five different ceviches. The Ceviche Trio ($42) is a pricy appetizer but includes the three most popular varieties, and is sizable enough for a light dinner if not shared. Let me start by saying all three options—while different—were equally enticing, fresh and quite satisfying. The classic ceviche is exactly what your tastebuds expect when you order ceviche: a high lime concentration with chunks of raw fish (this dish had grouper), onion slices, cancha (or salty corn kernels), sweet potato and Peruvian corn. The mixto ceviche has a variety of seafood including grouper, tender shrimp and plump calamari in a slightly spicy citrus sauce; it was my personal favorite. The Kousine ceviche came with tuna drenched in a passionfruit sauce that was sweeter than the other two ceviches. It’s also topped with nori, avocado, cucumber and sesame seeds.

Our second appetizer, La Causa ($19), was a take on tuna tartare that I’d never tasted. You have to like potatoes to enjoy the dish—and I certainly do. It’s a stout tower of layered mashed potatoes, tuna and avocado topped with fried shrimp and a rocoto cream sauce. Rocoto peppers, native to Peru, carry a heat similar to the habanero, but in this creamy sauce there was merely a hint of spice, and I enjoyed every bite.

For mains we dined on the Chaufa Aeropuerto ($19) and Aji de Gallina ($16). While Nikkei cuisine, which combines Peruvian ingredients with Japanese techniques, has become more mainstream in recent years, Peru also has a long (and tumultuous) history with Chinese immigrants who brought their cuisine to the country. Chifa is what the fusion of the two cultures is called, and chaufa is Peru’s version of fried rice. The barbecue pork fried rice was topped with an egg omelet and a sweet and tangy tamarind sauce. The peppers and daikon radish gave the dish a nice crunch that balanced the softness of the rice and pork. The aji is a shredded chicken dish that is served over large chunks of potato and then topped with creamy aji amarillo sauce. Aji amarillo, another Peruvian pepper, gives the dish its bright color and slightly sweet flavor. It’s creamy, filling, and warm, suggesting an excellent hangover cure.

For dessert we opted for the Lucuma Mousse with Chocolate Cake ($10). A native South American fruit, the lucuma gave the mousse a creamy citrus flavor with subtle hints of maple, complementing the cake’s sweetness.