Country: Peru
Dish: Ceviche
Location: Alpharetta
Stop: #11
Al Rosales will tell you it wasn’t easy introducing Peruvian food to metro diners.
“It took us almost a year for people to get to know us in this city.” Rosales, who grew up in Lima and moved to metro Atlanta in 2006, said.
In the restaurant's early days, Rosales said customers would visit Mambo’s Café inquiring about chips and salsa, mistaking the establishment for a Mexican restaurant. But the family’s commitment to Peruvian ultimately paid off.
“We had to weather the storm, and then we took off,” Rosales said.
While you'll find a mix of Peruvian and Cuban specialties on the menu, Rosales' father insisted on preparing traditional Peruvian dish himself for At the Table ATL, presenting fish ceviche.
“It’s like a diet...has no cholesterol at all,” Rosales explained for his father who does not speak English.
“How does this dish represent Peru?”
“It represents the culture,” he said. “When you go down there…now it’s like everywhere.”
The dish features the freshness of the fish, accompanied by Peruvian dried corn, “toasted, with a little bit of salt.”
“It’s refreshing. It’s different,” Rosales said. “We try to introduce [the Peruvian dishes] one by one as time goes by.”
“How does this dish represent Atlanta?”
“First, people didn’t know us. It took us a while for people to get to know us. But once people started coming in and tried our food, everything has changed,” Rosales explained. Everything has changed.”