Hayes Valley is one of those San Francisco neighborhoods that I rarely venture to, and I really don’t know why. It’s a lovely neighborhood, and happens to be chock-full of restaurants. When I found out that Destino serves grilled beef hearts, it’s all I needed to hear to make the trek to this cute little restaurant on Market Street.
Destino serves Latin American tapas with an emphasis on Peruvian cuisine, all of which I’m crazy about. Service is friendly and prompt here, and our group’s dishes began rolling in only a few minutes after our order.
We started with the causa con picante de camarones.
A Peruvian potato torte topped with tiger prawns and spicy prawn reduction sauce, the torte was colder than expected but the shrimp were juicy and succulent. “Picante” might be a relative term here, though, since the shrimp weren’t very spicy.
Next came the filet de bacalao and arroz de acietunas.
The black cod was encrusted with plantains and served alongside olive rice, toasted almonds and aji amarillo salsa. The cod was incredible: subtly seasoned and cooked to perfection. The aji amarillo provided a nice kick of heat.
Our third dish was the Peruvian chicken empanada. How can you not order empanadas when you see them on them menu?
Unfortunately, we were pretty disappointed in this dish. The empanada was undercooked and the filling was pretty flavorless. Even the sauce on the side couldn’t save it.
Our next order to arrive was the one I had been most looking forward to: anticuchos de corazon.
Anticuchos de corazon, or grilled beef hearts, are one of my favorite foods and here they were served with an aji panca reduction, green garlic and Peruvian choclo. Choclo, or large Andean corn, is hard to come by and they were a good accompaniment to the hearts. The grilled hearts themselves a little overcooked and the sauce overpowered them, but the pickled onion topping was wonderful.
Our next dish was the churrasco.
The grilled sirloin was topped with a chimichurri salsa and Maldon sea salt; simple and cooked just right. This was my favorite dish of the evening, and the chimichurri provided just the right kick of spice to the beef.
But we weren’t done yet. Our sixth tapa was the chile relleno.
Stuffed with ground sirloin and cheddar cheese and topped with chipotle salsa and citrus crème fraiche, the chile relleno was smoky and hearty. Despite so many different flavors happening in one dish, it really worked.
We ended our meal on a sweet note with the banana bread pudding.
You can’t really go wrong with caramelized bananas and caramel sauce, and the pecan crunch was a nice touch too. The pudding was moist and even though I’m not a big fan of desserts, I was all over this one.
Destino’s menu can be hit or miss but the food is imaginative and the ambiance is worth the visit. Just make sure to factor in extra time to look for parking, which can be difficult to find. Which reminds me, maybe that’s why I don’t go to Hayes Valley all that often.
Causa is one of my top three Peruvian dishes ever. Always served cold! (The other two being Aji de Gallina and Carapulcra. And good luck finding ANYONE serving the latter.)
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever associated empanadas with Peru and I’ve always thought of churrasco & chimichurri as Nicaraguan.
One thing that I’ll never get used to is the nomenclature Peruvian restaurants abroad seem to use for the food. i.e. Anticucho is by definition, beef heart skewers. If you were to make them out of chicken, then you’d have an Anticucho de pollo. Not the other way around. A friend back in Miami went to a Peruvian restaurant and ordered a Chicken Aji (instead of being listed as Aji de Gallina). When I read about this, my heart wept.
Okay, after this post (hell, your blog in general!) and all the tweeting I’ve been doing (all about Chipotle no less) I think I’m ready to hit the Bangkokian streets to get me a midnight snack!!!
I love shrimp and I love potatoes, so I dunno why I wasn’t crazy about this dish. Also, I must find aji de gallina and carapulcra and try them immediately.
So I guess anticuchos de corazon is sort of like saying “naan bread” (naan means bread in Farsi, Urdu and Hindi)? I love hearts though, beef or chicken.
And I know this has nothing to do with this review, but lomo saltado. I can’t talk about Peruvian food and not mention the gloriousness that is lomo saltado. One of my top ten favorite foods.
Eat some Thai noms for me! 🙂
Just like ‘naan bread.’ We do have this thing called Arroz Chaufa (Peruvian fried rice). Arroz being the Spanish word for rice (I’m sure you knew this already) and Chaufa is the Chinese word arroz.
Ever had some Rice Rice? It’s good stuff!
(side note: I wonder if there are any Peruvian restaurants here in BKK…)
I want to try arroz chaufa! It sounds sort of lomo saltado-ish.
You never know, there might be some Peruvian restaurants in Bangkok. When I was in Tokyo, there were quite a few Turkish restaurants, randomly enough. And oh, right in the middle of Kyoto’s train station was an Indian restaurant: “Spicy Masara,” I kid you not.
Yeah but there are Indian restaurants EVERYWHERE. It’s almost Chinese food status. Almost.
I’m gonna go hunt down a Peruvian joint here. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. (Maybe I’ll make a post about it!)
Please do! 🙂
chai tea!
MARIAM, how do you do all of this and stay so svelte and lovely?
i love that you have these pictures here, anyway, because they’re pretty much the only way i go to restaurants these days. 🙂
Yes, chai tea! That’s another good one. And I stay going to the gym to balance things out. 🙂