29-04-2025
This 'secret' East Side restaurant offers an authentic taste of Peru
Highly Recommended is a weekly spotlight on some of food writer Keith Pandolfi's favorite finds as he eats his way across Greater Cincinnati. Come back every Tuesday for more.
Inkazteka in Deer Park's Dillonvale Shopping Center is a family-owned restaurant that serves excellent versions of Peruvian and Mexican cuisines, though it's the Peruvian dishes that really shine. Given the importance of potatoes in Peru (they grow more than 4,000 varieties), I suggest starting with the papa a la huancaina ($9.99), a cold appetizer of sliced boiled potatoes drenched in creamy, spicy huancaina sauce, which is a mixture of aji amarillo peppers, queso and evaporated milk. Set on a bed of lettuce and garnished with black olives and hard-boiled egg slices, the dish might look like it's straight out of a 1960s issue of Gourmet magazine, but it's far more timeless than that.
One of the most classic examples of Peruvian cuisine is lomo saltado, a stir fry of beef or chicken, red onions (cut into wedges) and tomatoes sauteed in soy sauce and wine vinegar and served with french fries and rice.
According to my former co-worker Daniel Gritzer at Serious Eats, lomo saltado is an example of chifa cooking, "a term that describes the Chinese-Peruvian hybrid cuisine created by Chinese immigrants who moved to South America more than a century ago." Here, the indigenous American ingredients of potatoes, peppers and tomatoes are seasoned with soy sauce and then stir-fried.
Instead of ordering my lomo saltado the traditional way, I enjoyed it in the form of the Burrito Inkazteka ($16.99). Here, lomo saltado (complete with the french fries and jasmine rice) is stuffed and rolled into a flour tortilla and served on a festive yellow platter. The enormous burrito is burnished with shimmering chipotle sauce that adds a layer of smoky flavor.
If you'd like a little more spice with your meal, ask for a side of the restaurant's green hot sauce – which should satisfy even the most ardent heat freak – then wash it all down with a refreshing pineapple soda. My guess is that you'll be revisiting this shopping center secret sooner than later.
3920 E. Galbraith Road, inside the Dillonvale Shopping Center, Deer Park; 513-921-5663.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Looking for authentic Peruvian food? Head to this Deer Park restaurant
