Last weekend, my friends and I went to try out this place called Pikkas. Pikkas is a Peruvian restaurant in the Cherry Creek area, 300 Fillmore Street, Unit K, Denver, Colorado 80206.
At this restaurant, they had lots of seafood dishes, vegetarian options, and chicken and steak dishes. This summer night, we sat outside enjoyed some Peruvian cocktails and mostly selected the seafood dishes. My friends and I had not tried Peruvian food, so we asked our waiter what he suggested.
For appetizer, we ordered the Sauteed Mussels. It was cooked in a white wine, garlic, and spicy tomato sauce. It was so delicious from the mussels to the broth. It was nice that they garnished the dish with grilled, buttered toast, so you can absorb that flavorful broth after enjoying the mussels.
My friend and I ordered some traditional cocktails. In the picture below is their mosquito to the left and pisco sour to the right. Both drinks were refreshing for the summer evening, and they both had pisco in them. Peruvian pisco is a spirit made from multiple types of grapes that are distilled in a steel container unlike their wine that is aged in a wood barrel. The mosquito is the Peruvian version of a mojito with the pisco instead of run with muddled lime and mint, and agave instead of a simple syrup. The pisco sour, a very traditional drink, had pisco mixed with lime juice and topped with whipped egg whites and bitters.
One of the three main dishes we ordered was Arroz con Marisco which is their version of Peruvian paella. It was loaded with seafood, scallops, shrimp, and octopus, and topped with parmesan cheese and salsa criolla. This paella was is red because it not only has saffron, but it also has chili pepper paste. It a fragrant dish with so many flavors in your mouth from the nutty parmesan cheese, tangy and spicy from the salsa and rice, and sweet from the seafood.
The second dish was the Sudado de Pescado. It was an unctuous dish. The white fish that I selected was swai, and it was slowly prepared in a aji amarillo sauce with tomatoes and onions, served with cilantro, and white rice. The aji amarillo was this spicy, oily, yellow sauce that matched perfectly with this sweet, flaky fish which is mostly found in Southeast Asia.
To finish off with the main dishes, we also got the Lomo Saltado. It also had some Asian inspiration by them preparing the filet mignon with the aji amarillo sauce with tomatoes and onion in a wok, and then added some Latin flair by adding chimichurri on the side, and rice. This dish had some savory and acidic notes with the savory from the aji sauce, and then the acidic from the chimichurri which has parsley, garlic, oil, and vinegar in it.
We were obviously not full enough, so we ended with their version of coconut flan. The flan was creamy like cheesecake and sweet from the coconut and caramel sauce. It was a great end to a Peruvian food adventure.
<a href="http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/17/1792027/restaurant/Cherry-Creek/Pikkas-Peruvian-Cuisine-Pisco-Bar-Denver"><img alt="Pikkas Peruvian Cuisine & Pisco Bar on Urbanspoon" src="http://www.urbanspoon.com/b/link/1792027/biglink.gif" style="border:none;width:200px;height:146px" /></a>
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