Ricardo Zarate Dishes On His New Restaurant Paiche

Ricardo Zarate has garnered accolades for his first two Los Angeles-based restaurants, Mo-Chica and Picca. But instead of slowing down, the Peruvian-born chef is opening his third restaurant this spring. Paiche will still have the Peruvian roots of his two other restaurants, but with a slightly different focus. "The concept of Paiche is Peruvian Izakaya," he says. "So it's going to be Peruvian food with a lot of Japanese influence. It's going to have a very strong accent on seafood but with a Japanese flair. Many people know — or I don't know if many people know! — that in Peru we have a lot of Japanese influence in the cuisine."

Zarate believes that the cuisine is able to authentic, despite the distance from Peru: "Right now with the globalization it's more easy to get more access to produce, especially with the boom of Peruvian cuisine in the world... I can't get all the products, but at least the basic ones are available in America," he says.

For more from Zarate, including the meaning behind the name Paiche, watch the video above!