I’ll add some photos, cropped a little less tightly than usual to show the Vancasso serving dishes too, plus a few comments. (We were pointed to this restaurant by my friend Leslie, who is expert in Peruvian cuisines, having been married to a Peruvian-American husband for 20-plus years now, with many trips to Lima under her belt).
We have a lot of excellent Peruvian restaurants in the DC area and Gaithersburg is a long hike from Arlington, so the draw for me was the Paraguayan part of the menu. As far as I can remember, I haven’t had Paraguayan food before. That part of the menu is very short, but interesting. From a marketing perspective, they might want to consider expanding the Paraguayan choices and playing up the Paraguayan cuisine.
The owner has put together an interesting little one-case mini-museum of Paraguayan items, which I didn’t take time to study properly:
Cancha serrana (corn nuts). I googled this and Gemini oddly warned me that these are a choking hazard for small children.
The Vori Vori soup, which I’d never had before, was delicious. It reminded me of a cross between southern chicken and dumplings (one of my mother’s best dishes) and American cure-a-cold chicken soup, with a solid jolt of cumin added to the mix. The soft little dumplings in the soup were very interesting in texture and flavor. ChatGPT says they are made of corn flour and farmer’s cheese. I’m glad I didn’t know about the cheese part. Milk proteins and I don’t get along well, so I would have skipped ordering it. But there must not have been much cheese in the dish.
For me, this was the highlight of the meal. Interestingly, ChatGPT says the dish is sometimes called “Vori Vori” and sometimes “Bori Bori” (which I think sound virtually identical in Spanish). The menu at Uncle Marco’s called the dish “Vori Vori,” but the receipt called it “Bori Bori.”
The empanada was delicious, as savory as a Bolivian salteña, but less spicy and not soupy at all. The menu describes the dish as baked, but it seemed fried to me (aka “better than baked”). Although the empanada was in the Paraguayan section of the menu, the menu says it has “Peruvian spices.”
These were the classic version of anticuchos made with beef hearts (some American-Peruvian restaurants substitute beef for the beef hearts), which is one of my favorite dishes.
It’s interesting that Steve thought the anticuchos were “extra-crispy” and the tenderest beef heart he’d ever had. I guess it depends on your prior experience. I didn’t detect any crispiness at all and these anticuchos were slightly on the tough side of other anticuchos I’ve had (the chewiest I’ve ever had was when I tried to grill them at home; it takes grilling skills that I don’t have to make good anticuchos). I agree with Steve that these were real good, despite the very slight toughness.
I thought the ceviche, though pleasant, was a little underpowered. I like a little more chili kick than this dish had.
The chicken gizzards were very tough, which is basically true for every chicken gizzard preparation I’ve ever had, from Mama’s heavily fried version (she wouldn’t eat them and liked to make sure innards were cooked through and through) to the Korean grilled version that the DC City Paper’s review had erroneously labeled as “chicken rectums.” Uncle Marco’s version was tasty, mostly from the marinade, but the marinade was very similar to the marinade for the anticuchos. The chewiness would have me ordering a double order of the anticuchos next time and skipping the gizzards.
I got curious and poked around and found the old City Paper review of the purported “chicken rectums” place from back in March of 2011. I was very disappointed when we arrived and learned that the City Paper reviewer had mistranslated the Korean word for “gizzards” as rectums; on the other hand, my wife was very relieved at the mistranslation.
Finally, as Steve says, the escabeche was clearly the low point of the meal. Just poking around the internet, the sauce for this should have ingredients in something like these proportions:
2 fresh yellow chiles (ají amarillo; seeded/deveined), 3 small red onions (thick slices), ají mirasol paste (4 tbsp), ají panca paste (4 tbsp), ají amarillo paste (4 tbsp), salt (about 2 tsp), red-wine vinegar (about 250 ml).]
In other words it ought to have a real kick, with three pepper pastes and fresh aji amarillo peppers, plus a bunch of vinegar. This tasted like stewed fish in tomato sauce, with a spice level most two-year-olds could handle. It didn’t taste bad, but it was boringly bland.
