Osso

November 30, 2018

The Place

Osso is Lima’s “temple to meat,” a restaurant, butcher shop, and charcuterie. It was started in the suburb of La Molina, about 30-45 minutes from downtown Lima. There’s also a branch in San Isidro close to the financial district but we wanted to visit the mother church. Most tourists don’t venture much past Miraflores, Barranco, and maybe central Lima so this was a nice adventure and opportunity to see more of Lima.

The store

We left a bit early in order to give ourselves some insurance for unpredictable traffic, and as a result ended up about 15 minutes early for our restaurant reservation. Since the restaurant wasn’t open, that gave us an opportunity to explore the butcher shop. It’s eye popping. There’s a salumeria towards the front. There are lots of different salamis and other cured meats hanging for inspection. I was particularly tempted by the lardo but it wasn’t practical to bring in our luggage. As you move back you see cases with high quality fresh pork and beef both from Peru and imported.

When you get to the back you are surrounded by refrigerated cases full of aging beef. It’s an amazing display of love for dry aged beef from just starting to 18 months old. Mostly ribs and loins, some wagyu, lots of Peruvian but also plenty imported from the US. If you like dry aged beef the place is very much like a temple. I went from case to case saying “oh wow.”

The restaurant

By then the restaurant was open, so we took our seats. The restaurant menu, unsurprisingly has lots of charcuterie. Pork, and beef but also some prawns, chicken, and salad. This place does not really make any attempt to cater to vegetarians though.

We had mollejas (sweetbreads), anticuchos (beef heart), a wedge salad, chicharrones (fried pork), and chuletón de res (large ribeye steak). This way way too much food, but so worth it.

Mollejas

The first appetiser, mollejas (sweetbreads) over camote (sweet potato), was much larger than we had expected. It was five grilled sweetbreads over camote puree, and reminded me a bit of the mollejas at Cosme. Nicely griddled, well balanced by the sweetness of the camote.

Anticuchos

Next came the anticuchos. Anticuchos are practically the national appetiser of Peru and I have them as often as I can. Pieces of beef heart in a tangy marinade, skewered and grilled over hot coals. Properly done the are crispy and brown on the outside, and tender and juicy on the inside. Osso’s anticuchos are HUGE chunks, served with potatoes confit in port fat (yum) and crispy potato skins (yum) but as delicious as those were we knew that unfortunately potatoes were to be the enemy.

Getting the anticuchos off the skewers was a bit of a challenge and resulted in one of my more hilariously embarrassing moments. I was trying to use a fork to slide one of the pieces of heart off the skewer when it came free suddenly and flew behind the arm of the sofa where I was seated. I looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed, “la la la, nothing to see here.” I pretended nothing had happened and proceeded to remove the others by stabbing a piece of heart with the fork and gingerly pulling the skewer out. Thank goodness there were no more instances of flying meat.

Chicharrón

Next we had three kinds of chicharrón. Chicharrón are “cracklings” usually fried pork skin, but can also be pork belly, mutton, or beef (or in Peru - fish!) These three were a pork belly confit for 6 hours then roasted, dehydrated pork skin, and a pork belly “pachamanca” style. The confit was a perfect blend of crisped skin, suave pork, and browned roast flavors. The skin was a beautifully light and airy pork crackling. The pachamanca was in a style reminiscent of traditional hot stone cooking. Steamed with a slightly sour slightly pungent ground green herb sauce that complemented the meatiness of the pork.

Chuletón de Res

Finally the piece de resistance. Peruvian rib eye steak dry aged for 200 days. The flavor of meat aged this long is concentrated from losing so much moisture, and has a super funky umami from the breakdown of meat protein and fat. If you have a taste for it there’s nothing that can compare. Because of the long storage time, the weight loss due to evaporation and trimming, and the limited audience, it tends to be rare and expensive.

It was amazing.

It was a huge piece of ribeye, grilled to a perfect medium-rare. Not rare, because in my opinion meat with this much fat needs to be warmed enough so that the internal fat is softened, and rare won’t give you enough time before the fat congeals. The aroma was intensely meaty and funky from the aging, the flavor delivered on the promise of the delicious cooking smells.

Salad and petits fours

We also had an iceberg wedge salad with blue cheese vinaigrette to try to balance all the meat and fat, but it was hopeless. There was no way we were going to be able to balance all of that, and in fact we ended up taking about half of it home. We skipped dessert, but they brought us some cute meringues with bacon caramel and crispy quinoa.

The whole place felt very male, and very USAdian with US music, signs in english, and lots of homage to the US steak house.