Tops for Ceviche

MANCORA 99 1ST AVE. (6TH ST.), 212-253-1011

YOU DON'T often hear someone say they're in the mood for Peruvian. Its place on New York's dining map is analogous to that of Korean food—another fiery and soulful cuisine overshadowed by a bigger immigrant relative. But being a less-considered option only makes choosing Peruvian more rewarding. Part of the greatness of the cuisine is its accessibility: Everyone raised in the New World knows the ingredients. It's the flavors that earn Peruvian a full set of borders in that culinary atlas.

Find Mancora across 1st Ave. from the East Village McDonald's, on the edge of the 6th St. Indian zone. The room is spacious and completely open to both 6th St. and 1st Ave. in warm weather (One way Peruvian is like Mexican: The warmer the weather, the better it tastes). This Mancora is a spin-off of an original on Brooklyn's Smith St., which opened a couple of years ago.

Does it present a good, bad or mediocre example of Peruvian food? More pressing than that question is the need to establish a few facts regarding Mancora and ceviche:

1. What passes for ceviche in this town is disgraceful;

2. The causal factor is a lack of awesome ceviche;

3. If Mancora's ceviche met every other ceviche in Manhattan in any sort of contest, it would romp;

4. Such a contest should be held as soon as possible, as a matter of public interest.

To reiterate, the ceviche romps. Mancora offers eight distinct kinds, in main-dish portions priced, like all the restaurant's entrees, in the $10 to $15 range. Each is a cold wave of fresh lime with unique seaside aftereffects. Take the tiradito. Bite-sized pieces of halibut filet leave behind a spray of yellow pepper; a note of passionfruit is a tropical birdcall off in the distance. It's not just that the dish is acidic enough to conduct an electric charge, it seems to be actually doing so.

Ceviche de papaya is even better. The whitefish here is cut into strips, intermingled with chunks of fresh papaya on that lime-galvanized plane. Even the yam, plantain and roasted corn that bulk it up get all sparkly from this bath. One might think that cold-cooking with citric acid is not a delicate operation. Yet Mancora makes abundantly clear that plenty of pro cooks don't get it right.

Apart from its cevicheria, the restaurant is rarely spectacular. Such was the case with Mancora's other pan-South American offerings and, even more disappointingly, with its versions of distinctly Peruvian specialties as well. Nothing was bad enough that I wouldn't recommend the place. And the panache of the ceviches does manifest elsewhere, most notably in some of the grilled items.

Tops among those is the grilled squid appetizer (calamar a la plancha). Rings are marinated in a sauce of aji panca, a blue-black Peruvian chili pepper. They come off the grill ideal in consistency, with an appealing almost-herbal flavor and subtle spice. The squid comes with a serving of fried yucca every bit as crisp and savory as top-notch steak frites.

Papa Rellena is a traditional Peruvian starter that turns a potato into a sort of beef patty. It's the size and shape of a whole potato, but with a french-fry outer crust around a layer of smooth mashed, itself surrounding a core of sauteed beef, raisins and vegetables. Mancora's is tasty, with a nice touch of cilantro and fried onion. But the papa rellena served at a competing East Village Peruvian, Lima's Taste, is better.

An appetizer of stuffed avocado with shrimp (palta rellena con camarones) was another disappointment. Two shrimps are mere topping, while the "golf sauce" adorning the excellent, raw avocado turns out to be little more than peppers and mayonnaise.

On the main-course side, everything was satisfying, though there was even less of the razzle-dazzle that Mancora's ceviche and grilled squid would promise. Churrasco Mancora comes with superb grilled peppers and a side of powerful garlic-and-scallion chimichurri sauce to anoint its chewy slab of Argentine sirloin.

Tacu tacu con pescado is filet of red snapper in a sweet potato crust, with Peruvian rice and beans. Though the combination of flavors was on-point and the execution sound, the ingredients weren't fresh enough. Cerdo Pachacamac, grilled pork chops, was only moderately tasty, and the spinach potatoes on the side didn't come off at all.

I won't say stick to the ceviche.

Mancora serves very respectable mojitos, and some of its dishes will improve come summer, as the staff gains experience and the place gets busier. Stick to the ceviche or not—just don't skip it.

MINA Quick impressions of Mina, a Bangladeshi (and Indian, Pakistani and Nepalese) storefront restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens. The place has been buzzed about on the online foodie discussion board chowhound.com for months now. Recently, Mina started getting some glossy coverage, as all the great Chowhound discoveries eventually do. Few are as challenging, and as potentially rewarding, as this one.

There are almost 100 dishes, and the menu descriptions get you nowhere. You can't even tell what's a main dish and what's a starter. The staff is friendly, but their recommendations don't really help. You have to shoot in the dark. Also, you have to arrive very early and wait a long time for your food. Mina has one cook, and she apparently prepares everything to order, from scratch. I went on a Saturday night, arriving before 7, and got the last table. There wasn't a vacancy until after 9. You B.Y.O.B. and watch the inevitable Bollywood musical, salivating at the smells that waft from the kitchen.

The payoff is strange and wonderful food experiences. Chicken kabab at Mina is four huge meatballs in a ginger curry, with flavor simultaneously reminiscent of carrot cake and jerk wings. Deliciously confounding use of clovelike and nutmegish flavors was a theme of my first Mina meal. Shrimp Malai curry builds onto the structure of a traditional yellow coconut curry an entire complex of baking spices.

Servers push the creamy yellow dal fry, and pani puri, a chickpea, fried bread and yogurt salad. I wish I'd skipped those. The crazy eggplant thing with "special pickle and spices" that my wife ordered (it's called baigan achar), on the other hand, turned out to involve a truly awesome tamarind sauce. Ninety more shots in the dark to go!

Mina Foods and Restaurant, 48-11 43rd Ave. (betw. 48th & 49th Sts.), Queens, 718-205-6671.