Perched above Pamela’s in Shadyside is a Peruvian store and restaurant going by the name of La Feria. It claims to be a sister restaurant to Pamela’s, which is strange considering the utter lack of Peruvian in Pamela’s menu, but there it is. And despite the lack of guinea pig and alpaca on the menu, I was eager to see how Pittsburgh would do Peru.

The menu wasn’t too big, but I decided to go with the combo platter and picked Ropa Vieja (shredded beef) and Latin Flag (more ropa vieja, garlic rice and black beans in stripes like a flag). The dish came with salad or sweet potato chips, plus a couple pieces of bread and I obviously chose the chips. By mistake, the dish came out with a salad, but they did bring me my chips and the salad didn’t get in the way of the meal.

As for the meal itself, I was a fan of the ropa vieja, but didn’t find it as flavorful as I may have liked. The black beans were pretty tasty and the rice was, well, rice. The same goes for the sweet potato chips.

I really enjoyed the meal, but I couldn’t help but think La Feria needed more items to bolster the menu. They did seem to have a nice rotation of specials, but I’d need a bit more to make it a regular spot.

A lot of Latin American restaurants feel the need to include Mexican food to draw otherwise unsure customers in. For that reason, I am always excited to find ethnic restaurants sticking to their goods. One such restaurant is Peru Chix, basically a hole-in-the-wall type of place in Gardena. Peru Chix has such Peruvian favorites as Lomo Saltado, but I kinda thought chicken would be the way to go.

So I went ahead and ordered half of one. As a combo, which is most likely meant for multiple people, it came with two sides and a drink. I chose the fries and fried plantains, then looked at the pretty Peruvian meal in front of me. The chicken was rotisserie style fully clothed in skin and nicely seasoned. But, like all good Peruvian restaurants, they had some aji sauce to dip all foods in, as well as some sort of house dip. The aji was surprisingly spicy, but delicious.

The sides were pretty damn good too. I always love me plantains and they managed to cook them up with a bit of crisp and none of the oiliness that sometimes accompanies fried plantains. Perhaps best of all, the whole shebang was only 10 bucks. It’s a great deal for some satisfying food.

Not knowing what I was in for, and being led to believe that I was heading out for a night of cheap cocktails and free food, I headed to Picca Cantina on Pico. Unfortunately, although I had been promised free food, a miscommunication led to food being regularly priced. But this regularly-priced food still looked quite good and the bartender gave us our first round of drinks for free to apologize for the confusion. The menu consisted of some great-looking Peruvian dishes with a bit of a tapas flair. I ordered myself a Cusquena beer and then we got busy with ordering food.

We started off with their Empanada Trio. One beef, one chicken and one most hated eggplant. It also came with an unnecessary salad. Yes, I know empanadas are more of a Chilean and Argentinean dish, but if Thai places can serve orange chicken, I supposed Picca could take some artistic liberties with the continent of South America. They arrived pretty quickly and looked virtually indistinguishable from one another. To figure out which was which, we had to cut them open and see them from the inside. Since I was eating with my pals, Jonesy and DKoll, the cutting apart did not get in the way of our enjoyment. I tried all three because I had told my eating companions that I will try anything once. Yes, even the eggplant. Which was bad by the way. The other two were pretty good, but the seasonings didn’t exactly blow me away. Notably, though, the dough was flaky and almost pastry-like. While these weren’t bad by any means, I think empanadas are just better when they are kept as simple, delicious street food.

Although Picca didn’t have exotic Peruvian food like guinea pig or alpaca, they did have some other truly unique flavors. One of these was called Tres Leches de Tigre. Of course, this means three tiger milks, but in actuality there were no tigers invoved. In place of tiger’s milk, this was three different shooters – one with rocoto (a type of chili pepper), one with aji amarillo (another type of chili pepper) and the other with sea urchin. Yes, sea urchin. These were each filled with incredibly complex and strange flavors. The rocoto flavor even had a quail egg in it! My favorite was the aji amarillo, which had a really salty flavor, but a healthy hint of ginger to offer and interesting balance. While the first sip of each of these were a shock of taste, after a couple sips, they became more familiar and more like something that would be worth ordering again.

Next, we moved on to the real meat of the meal: Chicharron de Pollo. This was described as marinated, crispy chicken with salsa criolla and rocoto sauce. The criolla was essentially pico de gallo, so I brushed it away on my chicken pieces, but the rest of the chicken was just awesome. It has been lightly fried with a thin, crispy batter and was nice and juicy. The rocoto sauce was great for dipping and helped make this an all-around delicious dish.

Finally, we came to the Bisteck a lo Pobre. Yes, the steak of the poor. This consisted of skirt steak, a fried egg, pan-fried banana and chickpeas tacu tacu. Not sure what the tacu tacu was, but perhaps this somehow hinted at rice, which was also served in this bowl of deliciousness. All mixed together, Picca once again delivered some complex and unique flavors. The only downside of this dish was that the egg could have been runnier. As it was, the yolk produced only the slightest amount of liquid. Fortunately, this was overshadowed by the addition of the banana, which truly made the steak of the poor special.

So, when all was said and done, I felt like Picca was a great idea that needed a few little tweaks. The unique flavors that Picca brought to our table told me that this was a place I needed to return to, if only to discover what they could do with all of the other items on their menu that I didn’t get around to tasting.

Once upon a time I was totally on top of the food blogging world. Not so much that I was a good food blogger, but that I knew everything that was going on with food in LA. New restaurants, restaurants closing, new Taco Bell items. You name it, I knew it. But then I got busy with my real job and fell out of the loop. So when my buddy invited me out to dinner at A-Frame in Culver City, I really had no idea why he wanted me to go. But then with a little research I found out it was Ray Choi’s (the Man behind Kogi and Chego) newest restaurant escapade and was not to be missed. The old unvegan might have gone opening day, but the new unvegan let this restaurant opening get away from him, but was plenty excited to try it out.

The name A-Frame comes from the shape of the building, which is a former IHOP. Outside, the building hardly looks different from an IHOP aside from the lighting, but on the inside it looks almost like a ski lodge. The wait was a crazy hour, but after about 2o minutes of waiting, we asked if there were any other options and were told that there was a self-seating fire pit outside. Just as we went to look, a group left and we were all set to get ourselves a fireside meal.

The menu had a lot of great-looking food that looked like nothing I could have found at Kogi or Chego. If I hadn’t known the place was Choi’s, I probably never would have made the connection. In an attempt to try as much as I could, I split a few things with my buddy. First was their Spiced Sugar Nuts. This was just a snack to warm up with and was prepared with Japanese Snack Mix and Beef Jerky. So in essence this had peanuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, wasabi peas, and seaweed-wrapped rice crackers, with jerky. The sweet flavoring of the nuts was delicious, and although I like the flavor of wasabi, I felt like the wasabi peas were out of place here and was always disappointed when I bit into one. I felt the same way about the rice crackers. The seaweed just tasted fishy and was also unwelcome in my mouth. I’m all about fusion, but in this case I think it would have been better to just stick with the regular nuts and jerky. Although I didn’t think I could ever enjoy moist nuts and jerky, these were tasty.

On top of that we ordered their creatively named “Wings.” These were described as Korean-style, with blue cheese dressing and also came with some heirloom pickles, which I allowed on the plate since I was splitting with my buddy. I was a little wary of these, because a lot of Asian-style wings have very little spice and too much sweet. Fortunately, these were not that way. While they were not your average buffalo wings, they seemed to use buffalo sauce as a base, but added Korean spices and a little something that made them a bit sweeter than your average wings. This made for a unique flavor and was a very nice twist on ordinary wings.

Finally, we ordered the Cracklin Beer Can Chicken. Apparently this was done Peruvian-style, with century egg and a salsa roja and verde for dipping. Since it was two of us, we ordered the whole thing, but you could also order half. A beer can chicken is an interesting method of cooking that involves shoving an entire open can of beer inside the chicken’s ass and then grilling it. The result should produce a juicy chicken, although not exactly the most flavorful one. I had never heard of it done Peruvian-style, but I’m pretty sure the only thing that distinguished it from a backyard beer can chicken was the salsa. When it came, it looked delicious and the chicken glistened with char and juice. As expected, the chicken didn’t have a ton of flavor, but it was definitely juicy and tasty. I dipped it in the different salsas, which were nice, but neither were exactly what I wanted.

I looked around and noticed that my other eating companions had a great-looking dipping sauce that came with their Heirloom Pickle appetizer. While I frowned upon these pickles, for once in my life I was thankful for vegetables because they led me to such a delicious sauce. Simply called a “creamy dip,” this sauce gave the beer can chicken a completely new and delicious dimension. The dip had hints of garlic and parmesan, but was more complex than that and just made things taste great. I tried it with the wings as well and it made them taste better. This dip probably could have made pickles passable as food, but I wasn’t about to find that out for myself.

With A-Frame, Ray Choi has once again brought delicious and unique food to LA. I would take a pass on the nuts next time, but there are enough unique and delicious items on the menu to keep me coming back for more. I just can’t wait to see what else Choi has up his sleeve.

Although it seems like I’ve reviewed just about every truck on the streets of LA, there are still a few waiting for an unvegan visit. Lomo Arigato is no longer one of these. This truck dishes out Peruvian food and although they don’t fuse this with any sort of Japanese food, they still threw the word “arigato” into their name. This confused me, but I couldn’t let the strange name distract me from food. There were only three dishes in their menu and although they all looked pretty good, I decided to order their namesake, the Lomo Saltado.

About ten minutes later, my food was ready. I opened up my styrofoam box and took a look inside. There were no vegetables to be found and all I could see were meats and carbs, with a little cilantro. It looked to be a great unvegan meal. I started eating and was pretty happy with it. As my first lomo saltado experience, I have nothing to compare it to, but they seemed to have done a good job. The meat was plentiful and the fries were nice and crunchy, but after a few bites I realized that this dish was quite salty. Perhaps it was an over-use of the soy sauce or the fries happened to be super-absorbent, but either way, I really needed the rice to help tone down the saltiness.

Alpaca wool is known to be some of the softest and warmest wool in the world, which made it even more intriguing to me as a meal. When I was traveling in Peru, I knew the meat of that woolly animal had to be tasted.

My quest wasn’t easy, and the translations on the menus didn’t make it any easier. During the course of the trip, I happened upon a dish called “German Nicket to the Pleasure,” “Red Shoe,” “Chicken a la Coca-Cola” and the most frightening of all, “Chicken Locust.” At a restaurant in Puno, I ordered the seemingly simple “Spaghetti with Meat Sauce.” When it arrived, it was spaghetti, some sort of yellowish sauce and a massive chicken breast just plopped atop the noodles, where you might typically picture a diminutive meatball.

These experiences aside, I found my first alpaca on a menu in Cuzco. Although I have no recollection of the name of the restaurant, I can still picture it adjacent to the Plaza de Armas, with plastic chairs and tables set outside, inviting passersby to wander in for some exotic tastes.

My alpaca of choice was called “Alpaca con Tres Salsas.” Thinking of salsa in the traditional American way, I ordered it and expected some spicy salsas. In my lapse of Spanish reasoning, I had forgotten that salsa simply means sauce, so when my alpaca came with bright yellow mustard, deep red ketchup and a semi-translucent sauce that may have been mayonnaise, I was pretty surprised. Nonetheless, I had not ordered the camel-cousin for the sauces, but for the meat.

The meat looked like a sort of subprime cut of beef, with a sickly sort of greyish tone. Knowing that this wasn’t meant to be beef, I didn’t let these thoughts get to me. I cut in and began to eat. It was good. Real good. The texture was as if it had been overly tenderized, and I don’t mean this in a bad way. It made it really easy to cut, chew and swallow, the three most basic needs of any meal. It also tasted great. Similar to beef, but you would never mistake the taste for being actual beef.

Alpaca is definitely a dish I would recommend for anyone looking to break free of the confines of poultry, beef and mutton.