Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Too bad about Peri-Peri
South African restaurant can't quite pull it off
Boerewors
Shellfish in a corn husk
Eater — armed with nothing but a single, snarky graphic — fairly well explained the collective sigh of resignation so many of us heave on entering a new restaurant: we hope to see something inspired grace the menu, only to be greeted by yet another farm-fresh plate of grilled peppers, lightly dressed ahi tuna, “fancy” taco, or braised short rib served with an alternative root vegetable.
Hence, some small excitement over Peri-Peri, a South African restaurant with a terribly inconvenient location just off the 56 in the Torrey Highlands development.
Informed partly by indigenous culture, but mostly by immigrant communities from all over the world, South African cuisine has the potential to be very good, and a departure from the ordinary. Peri-Peri claims to make good use of the eponymous chili pepper, and the kitchen showcases some of South Africa’s best-known foods, but the results are mixed. The restaurant doesn’t meet its own potential.
Saag curry
The carrot ginger soup ($4 for a cup), which could be a warm and redolent dish, instead wants enhancement. Shrimp and scallops, cooked in a corn husk with peppers and corn for $9, tastes fishy and indistinct.
Saag curry ($13), a dish borrowed from the many Indian immigrants living in Africa, makes good use of chickpeas and comes with Peri-Peri’s best achievement, a side of delicate basmati rice — but the end result lacks pop.
Sosaties
Boerewors (sausage, $13) and sosaties (kebabs, $15) are South African dishes with the potential to shine, but Peri-Peri’s seem so-so at best. The dried-out wors sits on pretty-good mashed potatoes. The dried apricots skewered with sosaties dominate the dish, easily outstripping the underwhelming meat.
Even a ribeye steak — grilled, seasoned, and served with a blue-cheese sauce for $25 — is just OK.
The pity of all this is that Peri-Peri could be great, yet it commits the greater crime of being meh. The underlying ideas, like skewered meats and sausages, not to mention shrimp in various preparations, should be difficult to mess up. But the restaurant just doesn’t pull it off. The fair prices and the promise of novelty would make Peri-Peri a worthwhile trip, but only if the food was as good as it should be.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Too bad about Peri-Peri
South African restaurant can't quite pull it off
Too bad about Peri-Peri
South African restaurant can't quite pull it off
Boerewors
Shellfish in a corn husk
Eater — armed with nothing but a single, snarky graphic — fairly well explained the collective sigh of resignation so many of us heave on entering a new restaurant: we hope to see something inspired grace the menu, only to be greeted by yet another farm-fresh plate of grilled peppers, lightly dressed ahi tuna, “fancy” taco, or braised short rib served with an alternative root vegetable.
Hence, some small excitement over Peri-Peri, a South African restaurant with a terribly inconvenient location just off the 56 in the Torrey Highlands development.
Informed partly by indigenous culture, but mostly by immigrant communities from all over the world, South African cuisine has the potential to be very good, and a departure from the ordinary. Peri-Peri claims to make good use of the eponymous chili pepper, and the kitchen showcases some of South Africa’s best-known foods, but the results are mixed. The restaurant doesn’t meet its own potential.
Saag curry
The carrot ginger soup ($4 for a cup), which could be a warm and redolent dish, instead wants enhancement. Shrimp and scallops, cooked in a corn husk with peppers and corn for $9, tastes fishy and indistinct.
Saag curry ($13), a dish borrowed from the many Indian immigrants living in Africa, makes good use of chickpeas and comes with Peri-Peri’s best achievement, a side of delicate basmati rice — but the end result lacks pop.
Sosaties
Boerewors (sausage, $13) and sosaties (kebabs, $15) are South African dishes with the potential to shine, but Peri-Peri’s seem so-so at best. The dried-out wors sits on pretty-good mashed potatoes. The dried apricots skewered with sosaties dominate the dish, easily outstripping the underwhelming meat.
Even a ribeye steak — grilled, seasoned, and served with a blue-cheese sauce for $25 — is just OK.
The pity of all this is that Peri-Peri could be great, yet it commits the greater crime of being meh. The underlying ideas, like skewered meats and sausages, not to mention shrimp in various preparations, should be difficult to mess up. But the restaurant just doesn’t pull it off. The fair prices and the promise of novelty would make Peri-Peri a worthwhile trip, but only if the food was as good as it should be.
Comments