Pastuso is a Perivian restaurant in the city where they do ceviche, BBQ’d meats, traditional Peruvian desserts and the best pisco sours in town. They have a colourful neon wall as you walk in and the atmosphere has a vibrant and classy vibe. This month Pastuso are reaching their milestone of serving up 100,000 pisco sours and to celebrate they’re giving away free pisco sours if you visit for lunch in October, you also go into the draw to win a premium pisco hamper which is pretty awesome.
If you haven’t had a pisco sour before it’s like drinking a lemon meringue pie. It has pisco, sugar syrup and lime juice which gives it a good balance of sweet and tart. The cloud-like whipped egg whites are sweet and fluffy and there are a few drops of bitters on top that give it that lovely scent.
We started with ceviche which is the first thing I think of when Peruvian food is mentioned. It was ruby red snapper cut into chunks and cured in lemon juice with thin curls of sweet potato on top. Loved it.
The quinoa hummus was different to the chickpea version I’m used to, the texture was quite thick and had a toasted flavour with olive oil and a touch of sundried Peruvian chilli dust. It was served with crisp flatbread crackers.
The marlin fillet was cut into sashimi-like pieces and was served with braised shiitake mushrooms, aji mirasol and rice wine vinegar dressing.
The Port Lincoln cured sardine fillets were lovely and plump with a dressing of coriander, tiger’s milk and spring onions.
I loved the sweet corn cakes. They were soft and moist with creamy whipped feta over the top, thin slices of baby corn, black garlic, asparagus, spring onion and alfalfa. It had lots of lovely textures that went well with that wet corn cake.
The beef and fish skewers are one of my fave dishes at Pastuso. The meat is tender and the fish flakes apart beautifully and I love the huacay and aji amarillo (spicy herb) sauce. It was served on a bed of grilled vegetables with charred corn.
Then onto the mains we had the Bannockburn free range 1/2 chicken which was smoked and had a charcoal roasted skin. The meat on the inside was incredibly tender and juicy. It came with a traditional spring onion, lemon, and lime salsa. So yummy.
The Torello veal ribs were sticky, smoky and delicious. The meat easily came away from the bone and the meat was super tender. It was served with a smoked chilli salsa and some pickled raddichio which was tasty.
The chargrilled whole baby barramundi was cooked to perfection. The fish was so soft and flaked apart with ease and it had a lemon, parsley and shallot salsa over the top.
We needed some acompanamientos to accompany our meats and the Schreurs & Sons Gippsland wild celery salad had leafy greens with thinly sliced celery dressed with sherry vinaigrette. It was a good side.
The fried cassava chips were nice and crispy with shaved parmesan cheese and spicy rocoto mayonnaise to dip them in.
Then onto dessert we had the Traditional Latin American sponge cake that was soaked in three kinds of milk (including condensed milk). The cake was wet, soft and sweet it was delish and reminded me of pudding. The yuzu custard and passionfruit sorbet were good on the side to balance the sweetness.
The traditional Peruvian lemon pie was so silky smooth and had a beautiful flavour. There was a thin piece of crispy plum pisco meringue on the side which added some texture.
I heart Pastuso!
Olives x
Pastuso
Address: 19 AC/DC La, Melbourne VIC 3000
Website: http://pastuso.com.au
Phone: (03) 9662 4556
Trading Hours: Mon-Sun: 12pm-11pm
