On Food: Kirkland's getting spicy with the lively flavors of Peru

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Wednesday, November 30, 2005

On Food: Kirkland's getting spicy with the lively flavors of Peru

By HSIAO-CHING CHOU
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOOD EDITOR

The new buzzwords in the greater Seattle culinary scene will be "novo Andean cuisine" and the name associated with it: Emmanuel Piqueras.

P-I PODCAST

Hsiao-Ching Chou talks with cook and surfer Emmanuel Piqueras in her latest On Food podcast. You can listen to this conversation -- and others -- online or you can update your feed through iTunes.

Piqueras is a cook and a surfer who comes to the Seattle area -- Kirkland, to be exact -- from Lima, Peru, via Europe and Portland, where he gained national recognition for his Peruvian food at Andina restaurant. Seattleites who have made the trek south to explore Portland's noteworthy dining scene celebrate Andina for the lively flavors of the food and for having a serious selection of ceviches as well as traditional and novo (new) Andean dishes.

Now, the drive for Piqueras' food is merely the span of a bridge.

His restaurant is called Mixtura and it's in the former Jager Restaurant space (148 Lake St. S.). He plans to open Dec. 6.

The name is a reflection of the world influences that compose Peruvian cuisine and Piqueras' goal of applying modern cooking techniques to native dishes.


	Emmanuel Piqueras gained national attention with his Peruvian cuisine at Andina in Portland. He'll soon be opening Mixtura in Kirkland.

"When the Spanish people went to Peru, the real and authentic Peruvian cuisine went to sleep," Piqueras says. "We want to rescue the old Peruvian cuisine."

For example, one of Piqueras' favorite dishes is pachamanca, which is a stew of tubers, grains and venison or quail that's normally cooked in a pit in the ground. His novo interpretation includes cooking the stew in a clay pot, which he seals with a ring of traditional Incan quinoa bread, and the addition of lamb.

"I want to surprise people and make happy the people, not only eat and get full," Piqueras says.

He wants to create "magic" like his mentor, Juan Mari Arzak, does in San Sebastian, Spain. Arzak's eponymous restaurant has three Michelin stars and, as he told his apprentice on the first day of work, people don't go to Arzak simply for the food. They go for an experience. Cuisine, he offered, is not a profession, it's an illusion.

"He opened a window for me," Piqueras recalls fondly.

Arzak was also the person who shared with Piqueras the distinction between a cook and a chef: There are no chefs in his kitchen, just cooks, who work very hard. If you want to see a chef, Arzak said, go to France.

If Piqueras achieves magic at Mixtura as he hopes, the diner will "get ideas" and "get inspiration." The food will conjure up "emotion" and "you will get more than get full."

Piqueras grew up in a middle-class family in Lima, living his whole life "in front of the ocean," which gives him the greatest inspiration. He favors cooking seafood and wild mushrooms, which the Northwest delivers by the bushel.

"I have a lot of respect for nature, because I want to cook forever."

P-I food editor Hsiao-Ching Chou can be reached at 206-448-8117 or hsiaochingchou@seattlepi.com.

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