Octopus ceviche
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298 Rathdowne Street, Carlton North, 9349 2777
My score: 3.5/5
What kind of cooking were you doing at 11? I was helping mum crumb schnitzels and making the occasional cake (that is, licking the mixing bowl). Colombian chef Juanito Berbeo was slaughtering lambs after school, then heading off to cater barbecues for 50 people.
His family are a big part of the food scene in Fusagasuga, a large town near Colombia’s capital Bogota. His grandparents opened the first restaurant on the road between the two places, his parents had a catering business, and butchery was part of life. Using the whole beast was too obvious to be anything as grand as a philosophy. A beast would be killed, the meat barbecued, the intestines used for soup, the feet for stew and the blood for sausages.
Berbeo has brought his culture to Piqueos, which opened three-and-a-half years ago with a menu of Argentinian and Peruvian food. Recently, the restaurant has shrugged off formalities of menu and style, rebranded as Piqueos Asadero (‘grill’) and embraced Colombian cooking too.
There’s some delicious food here, from a menu divided into fish, baked goods, meat and vegetables, most of it fit for sharing. Berbeo’s food combines the heart of his upbringing with some mod-Oz flourishes.
The octopus ceviche is delicious. Fat tentacles are braised to tenderness, briefly charred, then dressed with leche de tigre, the ‘tiger’s milk’ which has nothing to do with milking tigers. This cloudy mixture of grapefruit juice, fish stock, ginger and garlic seeps into the octopus then, at the last minute, it’s dressed with bitey lime, parsley and red onion, and scattered with olive salt and fermented black garlic. Sweet potato crisps add crunch. It’s a good mix of fleshy, tart, smoky and crisp.
The new Piqueos encourages popping in for a snack: the ceviche, juicy beef empanadas and a glass of Argentine Malbec would set an evening up nicely.
Once you’re there, though, you’ll want to try the pork. Berbeo debones a pig, leaving the skin intact, then mixes the flesh with rice and split peas. He stuffs the mixture back into the skin, sews it back up, then roasts it all day. The result is succulent pilaf inside crunchy porky shell, which is one definition of food heaven. The pumpkin is good too: it’s a dressed-up version of the comforting dish Berbeo’s mum made for him, with a soft egg, mushy peas and charred root veg.
With a little fine tuning, Piqueos could be even more appealing. The illumination goes beyond mood lighting to slumberous – it could be turned up a notch. Some food is hard to tackle, like the roasted, spiced half-chicken, presented at the table in one piece, with no carving cutlery. It was a shame to massacre it to ascertain that it was delicious. More background information would enrich the experience: there are some terrific stories hidden in the dishes but they’re not told. Melbourne doesn’t know much about Latin American food – I’d love Piqueos to spill some secrets as well as serve us tasty food.
See their website.
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Come to this Jamaican eatery for seafood gumbo, curry goat, jerk chicken and relaxed times.
First published in The Age, 19th June 2016.
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