Q & A With Mo-Chica's Ricardo Zarate, Part 2: The Joy of Barracuda, L.A. Peruvian Food + Life and Soccer in England

In the first part of our interview with Ricardo Zarate, the Mo-Chica chef talked about, among other things, his upcoming Peruvian skewer bar, Anticucho, which he plans to open in September in the neighborhood of Beverly and Pico if all goes as planned. In the second part of the interview (turn the page), Zarate continues the discussion, about Peruvian food in Los Angeles, how much he loves barracuda, and the challenges of sunlight, soccer and travel during his 12 years in England.

Check back later for Zarate's recipe for Aji de Gallina. If, after reading this, you have a sudden overwhelming desire to eat at Mo-Chica, you would do well to call the restaurant before swinging by unannounced, at least today. Zarate is having his 11th Tasting Menu dinner this evening, a sweet deal at $35, but which requires reservations. Zarate does these dinners once a month, and has since shortly after he opened (if you do the math, this tells you that Mo-Chica is almost exactly a year old). With live music and the city's best Peruvian ceviche, you might put it on your calendar for next month if they're booked tonight.

A. Scattergood

Ricardo Zarate of Mo-Chica

SI: And so do you think people are getting Mo-Chica now?

RZ: One day I had on this t-shirt, it has the Mo-Chica logo, and I was buying something at Whole Foods, and some guy says, Hey! Mo-Chica. That was funny; that was good. It's tough, this location, very tough. Because no alcohol. But we have support. Locally it's very tough because even if you think the price is affordable, in this area it's very high. I get a lot of complaints locally. This is the max I can go down, because the ingredients are very expensive. I mean, I'm doing a lot of magic. I buy things from the farmers market, I get to know the suppliers, I shop at Grand Central. I have to be creative. Now is the season for local sea bass, barracuda. I sometimes call it kamasu, the Japanese name. I prefer to call it kamasu because when I call it barracuda people get scared. It's such an amazing fish, it's really good. The sea bass now is in season, from Santa Barbara. Albacore is coming in about a month. I'm going like three times a week to the fish market. Today I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning to go.

Anne Fishbein

barracuda at Mo-Chica

RZ: There are a lot of other Peruvian restaurants, but they're very ethnic, you know? I have very strong roots but I think what I did with Peruvian food is I cleaned it up. The flavors are more clean. There are a lot of restaurants, but they're more traditional. Since I came here, I've maybe eaten in two different Peruvian restaurants. I think it's going to grow up, it's going to become big. In San Francisco, Peruvian food is already very big. A lot of restaurants. The diners are a little different in Los Angeles, I would say a little bit. It's more compact there.

SI: The neighborhoods are smaller.

RZ: Yeah, I mean here in Los Angeles it's tough. It's tough to open a restaurant. When I went to San Francisco it reminded me a little bit of London. You can open anywhere and people come, a lot of neighbors come. Here you need to drive everywhere, you have the parking, it's tough. But it's not impossible. And I think if you can come here to Los Angeles then that's it, you can go anywhere in the world.

SI: So how did you end up in London in the first place? You're from Lima, right?

RZ: I'm from Lima, I studied culinary in Lima. When I was little I liked cooking. And now, I can't believe I did it. I was 16 years old, I made a banquet for a big corporation. I happened to know the guy and I said, I can do it. I made for 600 people, and I cooked in my house. I don't know how I did it. I remember they paid me $3,000, which was a lot of money in Peru. I was feeling rich. I went to the fish market, I asked my friends from the neighborhood to help me, I was buying octopus. And at that time I remember I was eating at my friend's house and I tried one dish, which was octopus with this sauce and I really loved it and I said, How do you make this? Can you teach me? So she taught me everything about this dish. I didn't know I was eating sashimi. It was octopus with shoyu and wasabi. And this is the first time I'd had wasabi. And they told me, you need to go to this market, buy this, make this. It was very successful. I remember it was with sesame oil and chiles. This was the 1990s.

And I studied culinary. I finished my degree in hotel and restaurant management; that was about three years. Right when I finished, I had a friend from London and he was working there, he got some money and opened a business, and he asked me to help him. I felt frustrated because I felt I didn't know that much. I was always complaining to him that I needed to know more. He was telling me that I needed to go to London, that London had a lot of restaurants. He put that idea in my head. So I went there and applied for a student visa. And that was it. I couldn't say one single word in English. I was lost in the airport. I was completely lost. My friend was supposed to pick me up, and then my plane was changed. I flew to Miami. And the lady there, it was a really bad experience for me. She was talking really bad to me, she was Cuban: I know you, you're going to stay in this country, blah blah blah. I said, I'm not going to stay here, you're the one who stayed here, I am going to London. She made me stay there -- I'm talking about 16 years ago -- with a policeman. And then they sent me to Heathrow.

I was supposed to fly to Gatwick. So my friend was waiting for me at Gatwick, which is almost three hours away. So when I got to Heathrow I was lost. You know, Peru didn't have trains underground; it was the first time in my life I'd ever gotten into a train. I could tell you many things that happened to me... So finally my friend managed to find out where I was. I was supposed to arrive at 8 o'clock in the morning; already it was 5 o'clock. We went right to Picadilly. My friend said, I need to go to work, so leave your bags here and just walk around. I was walking and I went to this mall and I saw this cinema, and I bought a ticket. And I went inside the cinema and when I came out--it was about 10 o'clock at night--when I went outside I saw the sun and the daytime and I almost went crazy. In Peru, we're right at the equator. I thought it would be dark and I was like, What's going on? Oh my god. It was one very long day.

Then I started working there, and I studied English. I studied culinary also in London. I went to Westminster. I did my homework. And that's it, now I'm here and I don't want to move from here.