There is not always salmon at Salmon & Salmon, but that is not a failing, or even the point. Salmon & Salmon are the two Peruvians who founded this cozy shopping-center spot in the '80s, father and son. There might not be salmon, but there is always fish, schools of it, plain old fish, and clams, mussels,crab, scallops, squid, octopus, shrimp and anything else, all prepared in bright and brash Peruvian style.

Salmon & Salmon swims with a lot of competition, situated as it is on Northwest Seventh Street, a busy State Road 836 offshoot that has within a shell's throw Cuban, Dominican, Italian, sports bar and plenty more eating opportunities. The distinguishing factor here is ultra-fresh seafood, kindly service and fair, if not rock-bottom, prices. Atmosphere is not much: There are maybe 40 seats, a 27-inch TV on the wall, posters of Peru and some hanging plants in this tiny room, which is clean and staffed by smiling, quick-moving servers.

Start with the simplest and best, hot rolls served with butter and aji, an addictive native hot sauce made with cilantro, garlic, onion, oil and ripe hot chiles. This stuff, which looks like harmless mustard, will burn the hairs off your tongue on the way down, but it's incredibly savory, so much so that you'll be tempted to drop a dollop into each dish you get.

This is not necessary with Peruvian-style mussels ($6.25 for a half-dozen). This cold appetizer is a platter of fresh mussels on the half-shell, buried nearly alive under a jazzy salsa of salt and pepper, garlic, lime, red onion, parsley, coriander and chopped cilantro, a bracing introduction to Peruvian cuisine. For those of you more in step with mountain cooking, check out the Andean take on the potato, the staple food there, like beans and rice in Little Havana. It's papas a la huancaina ($4.50), sliced boiled potato blanketed with a creamy queso blanco (white cheese) sauce, flavored to mild extent with green chile and garlic and served with a bit of boiled egg, lettuce and a black olive. Creamy, mild, pleasing pablum to offset the ahi (of course, the addict has added ahi even to this by now).

New England clam chowder, ubiquitous, is here, but classic Peruvian seafood soups are where you should go. Two vastly different stocks but similar themes are the seafood aguadito ($6.75 or $12.99) and the parihuela (sailor's soup, same price). The aguadito has a field-green look and tang from bushels of minced cilantro, Peruvian pesto, stocked like the National Aquarium with whole shrimp, scallops, squid, octopus, clams, mussels, the whole nine leagues.

It's an unbelievable bounty, and there are bits of rice and some stray green peas added, to boot. The sailor's soup is a similar collection of sea treats, sans peas and rice, but bobbing this time in a hearty tomato base flavored with a mild aji.

Themes develop. The green treatment rises again with poached filet of corvina ($9.99). The fish is cooked in grouper broth with onion, garlic, wine and lots of cilantro, a bright and savory semi-stew, semi-sautee. Fish is tender and sweet, the corvina a light, ultra-white flesh that takes on the character of the lusty sauce. Added in here are chunks of potato.

Tomato base is back again in linguine with seafood sauce ($13.50). This is plenty for two, a bubbling cauldron in which are arrayed a perimeter of fresh clams in the shell, surrounding a big fluffy bed of linguine sleeping peacefully with loads of shrimp, crab legs, scallops, squid, octopus, the all-star cast. The light tomato sauce, flavored with broth made with shrimp, fish and mussels, plus red wine and cream is hearty rather than bright, but what you want to taste here is all the delicious seafood.

Back again, we'd check out the land-based side of the menu, which consists of beef. Charcoal-broiled skirt steak, fried steak, sirloin with onions, Creole style tops of sirloin, even beef mixed with, yes, seafood are available, some served uni- Latin style with rice and beans.

Finish with Peruvian bavarois, fluffy whipped egg whites with apricot, or the Latin generics, tres leches and flan, homemade and brought in.