Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Dubai: A Rough Diamond Emerges
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Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Dubai: A Rough Diamond Emerges
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine is JLT’s most promising new opening. Spicy, homely and tasty, but persevere with some teething issues.
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Jumeirah Lake Towers, Cluster Q Saba Tower 3, Shop G04, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, two starters, one main course, one dessert and one large bottled water: AED 400 (incl taxes, excl tips). Menu: ceviches from AED 85-100; causas and starters: AED 30-100; hot mains: AED 100-140; desserts: AED 12-50. Unlicensed.
Written by Liam Collens // Find other reviews here.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Dubai: A Rough Diamond Emerges
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine is an early contender for one of the best meals in 2023 (although, I first ate here in 2022). Yet, it is restrained and far from flawless. There is none of that frothing tantara endemic to Dubai. It is not licensed; Fusion Ceviche doesn’t even have a legible sign above the door (at the time of writing). The original Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine sign is washed away, all faded to a cocoa brown, leaving you to guess where it is and what’s inside its space.
But forget all that. There is a quiet humility at Fusion Ceviche. A neighbourhood restaurant with *maybe* two dozen seats. It offers a sense of community; an intimate space, where you graze in a tightly packed restaurant sharing counters and tables with strangers. You know, like what we did before all that social distancing. Still community ripples through as Chef Penelope’s family also works the restaurant floor. Fusion Ceviche is more than a restaurant; it’s a tribe. It’s personal.
Inside Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine at the ceviche bar
But forget all that. There is a quiet humility at Fusion Ceviche. A neighbourhood restaurant with *maybe* two dozen seats. It offers a sense of community; an intimate space, where you graze in a tightly packed restaurant sharing counters and tables with strangers. You know, like what we did before all that social distancing. Still community ripples through as Chef Penelope’s family also works the restaurant floor. Fusion Ceviche is more than a restaurant; it’s a tribe. It’s personal.
Inside Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine at the ceviche bar
Fusion Ceviche is still finding its feet
Today, some best-sellers are not available. A favourite – the crunchy hand-rolled empanada de la abuela all lovingly crammed with richly seasoned beef and aji panca – is MIA (AED 30). I take this as a positive sign: nothing frozen, nothing made three days ago. However, Dubai’s less forgiving crowd may chalk up missing dishes to poor preparation, especially for a restaurant that only opens at 1 pm for lunch. What happened to noon?
So Fusion Ceviche glints with the telltale signs of a newly opened restaurant. One that’s pivoted from supper club success to the big leagues, but not fully in its stride. Sounds like another former supper club favourite? Still, it is hard not to be charmed by the scrappy affair that of it all. Fusion Ceviche leans a little on your goodwill but gives more in return. Here among volumes of Peruvian cookbooks, a library whose pages merely skim thousands of years of gastronomic culture – the nation possibly responsible for a worldwide obsession with potatoes – you sense the restless shifts of something promising. Once Fusion Ceviche has its act together, these Peruvians will storm Dubai.
Chef Penelope Diaz’s rise is as bright and sharp as her leche de tigre. As the story goes, she served ceviche to her neighbours and fellow residents from her apartment in Jumeirah Lake Towers. The orders kept coming. Bowl after bowl of what matured into Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine. She quickly caught the attention of Dubai‘s food cognoscenti. Another female chef doing big things. Her recent collaboration with DIFC stalwart, BOCA, underscores Dubai’s admiration.
Fusion Ceviche serves cancha as a snack; the ceviche bar area; the decor is simple but bright
So Fusion Ceviche glints with the telltale signs of a newly opened restaurant. One that’s pivoted from supper club success to the big leagues, but not fully in its stride. Sounds like another former supper club favourite? Still, it is hard not to be charmed by the scrappy affair that of it all. Fusion Ceviche leans a little on your goodwill but gives more in return. Here among volumes of Peruvian cookbooks, a library whose pages merely skim thousands of years of gastronomic culture – the nation possibly responsible for a worldwide obsession with potatoes – you sense the restless shifts of something promising. Once Fusion Ceviche has its act together, these Peruvians will storm Dubai.
Chef Penelope Diaz’s rise is as bright and sharp as her leche de tigre. As the story goes, she served ceviche to her neighbours and fellow residents from her apartment in Jumeirah Lake Towers. The orders kept coming. Bowl after bowl of what matured into Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine. She quickly caught the attention of Dubai‘s food cognoscenti. Another female chef doing big things. Her recent collaboration with DIFC stalwart, BOCA, underscores Dubai’s admiration.
Fusion Ceviche serves cancha as a snack; the ceviche bar area; the decor is simple but bright
Grown men, with both hands, drink the leche de tigre from the bowl, like my little nephews after a round of Crunchy Nut Corn flakes.
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine’s menu and food
Fusion Ceviche’s tidy 20 courses plus six desserts reassure me. Encyclopedic menus make my skin crawl with doubt. Gladwell’s 10,000 hours are never realized in such spaces. Here in the rehearsal of doing a few things over and over again a craft is honed, forged and mastered. Here, 500 words in, is where you come to realize why I admire Fusion Ceviche so much.
Fusion Ceviche’s namesake is lovingly assembled at a bar counter where plump chilled mouthfuls of sea bass bathed in fiery, sharp leche de tigre – thrumming with mouth-puckering lime juice and a wallop of chilli heat – is bolstered with sweet potato, sweet and crispy cancha-like corn kernels (AED 85). Grown men, with both hands, drink the leche de tigre from the bowl, like my little nephews after a round of Crunchy Nut Corn flakes. The Tuna Nikkei with fresh chilled tuna warms with what might be sesame oil (AED 90). The shift of sharpness and richness demonstrates agility and skill and, in all four of my visits, a steadfast consistency with excellence. We need more restaurants like this in Dubai AND they need our support.
Fusion Ceviche’s pulpo anticuchero is a substantial starter; so large, it could be a main course (AED 100). Crispy, tender Galician octopus laced with a smokey medley of Peruvian huacatay sauce, more aji panca and smoked chimichurri. Rounds of fork-tender potatoes bulk out the dish.
Many would send cold mashed potato back to the kitchen, but causa is exactly that, if not an acquired taste. The refreshing causa dishes showcase Peru’s long-standing love affair with these tubers. A nation that boasts growing thousands of varieties of potatoes. Give the crabmeat or octopus causa with avocado, parsley and homemade olive mayonnaise a whirl and open your mind to what’s possible (AED 80).
Fusion Ceviche’s hefty main courses are easily shared. A lomo saltado with Japanese wagyu beef, more Peruvian yellow potatoes and aji amarillo risotto could fuel a coal miner’s solid day’s graft (AED120). The seco norteño’s collapsingly-soft lamb shank with yucca purrs with assertive seasoning after a 24-hour braising (AED 130). The menu says it’s beef short rib; it’s not. The arroz con pato is also sold out today. A totemic sharing plate of arroz con mariscos – a heaped riot of squid, octopus, scallops, green rice, tomato confit and a langoustine crown – could feed a small village, sending me into a food coma (AED 140). My only quibble being some seafood is arguably overcooked, but I suspect few will notice.
For dessert, three delicate alfajores, traditionally made with almonds and dulce de leche, are charming coffee accompaniments (AED 12). We order the tres leches or three milk cake as – you guessed it – the suspiro limeño (the sigh of Lima), a traditional Peruvian dessert of manjar blanco (like dulce de leche), meringue and cinnamon, is not available. It’s now the sigh of Liam. The Three Milk Cake is moist and sweet (possibly too sweet for some), but we all have to die of something and at least I’ll go out doing something I love (AED 45).
Fusion Ceviche’s grilled octopus, slow-cooked lamb shank, two ceviches of tuna nikkei and sea bass; the three milk cake and the alfajores
I am here every other week at this rate freshening up on my Spanish and and eating salvos of weapons-grade ceviche. There is so much promise at Fusion Ceviche whereas certain other pseudo-Nikkei Peruvian restaurants are thinly disguised Asian eateries. JLT often generates some of Dubai’s most exciting restaurants and Fusion Ceviche deserves a spot in that conversation. Just keep the empanadas in stock.
Seafood lovers, Latin American food enthusiasts, nearby residents and people on the hunt for the next big thing.
Fusion Ceviche’s namesake is lovingly assembled at a bar counter where plump chilled mouthfuls of sea bass bathed in fiery, sharp leche de tigre – thrumming with mouth-puckering lime juice and a wallop of chilli heat – is bolstered with sweet potato, sweet and crispy cancha-like corn kernels (AED 85). Grown men, with both hands, drink the leche de tigre from the bowl, like my little nephews after a round of Crunchy Nut Corn flakes. The Tuna Nikkei with fresh chilled tuna warms with what might be sesame oil (AED 90). The shift of sharpness and richness demonstrates agility and skill and, in all four of my visits, a steadfast consistency with excellence. We need more restaurants like this in Dubai AND they need our support.
Fusion Ceviche’s pulpo anticuchero is a substantial starter; so large, it could be a main course (AED 100). Crispy, tender Galician octopus laced with a smokey medley of Peruvian huacatay sauce, more aji panca and smoked chimichurri. Rounds of fork-tender potatoes bulk out the dish.
Many would send cold mashed potato back to the kitchen, but causa is exactly that, if not an acquired taste. The refreshing causa dishes showcase Peru’s long-standing love affair with these tubers. A nation that boasts growing thousands of varieties of potatoes. Give the crabmeat or octopus causa with avocado, parsley and homemade olive mayonnaise a whirl and open your mind to what’s possible (AED 80).
Fusion Ceviche’s hefty main courses are easily shared. A lomo saltado with Japanese wagyu beef, more Peruvian yellow potatoes and aji amarillo risotto could fuel a coal miner’s solid day’s graft (AED120). The seco norteño’s collapsingly-soft lamb shank with yucca purrs with assertive seasoning after a 24-hour braising (AED 130). The menu says it’s beef short rib; it’s not. The arroz con pato is also sold out today. A totemic sharing plate of arroz con mariscos – a heaped riot of squid, octopus, scallops, green rice, tomato confit and a langoustine crown – could feed a small village, sending me into a food coma (AED 140). My only quibble being some seafood is arguably overcooked, but I suspect few will notice.
For dessert, three delicate alfajores, traditionally made with almonds and dulce de leche, are charming coffee accompaniments (AED 12). We order the tres leches or three milk cake as – you guessed it – the suspiro limeño (the sigh of Lima), a traditional Peruvian dessert of manjar blanco (like dulce de leche), meringue and cinnamon, is not available. It’s now the sigh of Liam. The Three Milk Cake is moist and sweet (possibly too sweet for some), but we all have to die of something and at least I’ll go out doing something I love (AED 45).
Fusion Ceviche’s grilled octopus, slow-cooked lamb shank, two ceviches of tuna nikkei and sea bass; the three milk cake and the alfajores
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Would I Return?
I am here every other week at this rate freshening up on my Spanish and and eating salvos of weapons-grade ceviche. There is so much promise at Fusion Ceviche whereas certain other pseudo-Nikkei Peruvian restaurants are thinly disguised Asian eateries. JLT often generates some of Dubai’s most exciting restaurants and Fusion Ceviche deserves a spot in that conversation. Just keep the empanadas in stock.
Fusion Ceviche Authentic Peruvian Cuisine, Who Should Visit?
Seafood lovers, Latin American food enthusiasts, nearby residents and people on the hunt for the next big thing.
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