2.5 stars for fast, cheap & delicious sushi and ceviche at SuViche on South Beach

2.5 stars for fast, cheap & delicious sushi and ceviche at SuViche on South Beach

What do you get when you combine sushi and ceviche? SuViche, of course. It’s been a hit on Brickell since 2010, and the new incarnation on South Beach is an equally appealing, fast, cheap and delicious way to sample Nikkei cuisine. Most Americans were introduced to this home-grown Japanese-Peruvian fusion after Nobu Matsuhisa brought it here from Lima in the mid 1980s. SuViche also offers a lineup of popular Chinese or chifa cuisine, comforting, home-style Peruvian hot plates and chef Jaime Pesaque’s inventive creations. The menu is diverse but not encyclopedic. Snappy young waiters are quick to deliver the salty, Peruvian roast-corn snack cancha salada while offering up suggestions.

Ambience: The movie-star handsome owner, Mexican-Brazilian Aliosha Stern, insists on clean, light and healthy flavors. The space reflects that same fresh, casual focus with bright orange molded plastic chairs, high ceilings and bright white and nearly-neon orange walls.

What Worked

• Towers of causa deftly built of yellow smashed potatoes loaded with tuna, chicken and crab salad
• Fantastic lomo saltado smartly combining bite-size bits of tender beef, slivers of sweet red onion, scallion and a few threads of tomato (pictured)
• Crisp, thick slabs of gently fried potatoes
• Fluffy white rice
• Fantastically creamy, smooth and just spicy enough ají de gallina - juicy, shredded white chicken breast, yellow-as-egg-yolk ají amaraillo sauce, chopped walnuts and a few rounds of boiled potato
• Fresh and lively tiraditios with a choice of sauces ranging from sweet and creamy to super racy
• Delightful chifa with see-through slabs of corvina, avocado, spring lettuce mix, red onion, crunchy Chinese noodles and tiny squares of pink pickled ginger
• Tuna tataki - subtly sauced and ever-so-gently seared lozenges of tender, rosy flesh with roasted peanuts
• The nectar roll with fried shrimp, cream cheese, mango, paper, orange honey sauce and a dab of sweet thick eel sauce
• Jalapeño roll with white fish tightly rolled and topped with a round of a kicky chile pepper and spicy mayo that gets a turn under the broiler to give it a melty, warm edge
• Madness Chocolate Cake - a huge triangle of chunky, creamy, dark-as-charcoal cake laced with gooey frosting baked right into it, a few crackly bits of praline and a veil of hot chocolate sauce