Adventure 2: Inka Heritage

Inka Heritage (website)
602 S. Park St.
3 Adjectives: Ethnic, savory, salty.
Price: app (5-13) entree (9-30)
Authenticity:
Atmosphere:
Overall:
Other Opinions: chilimuffin's, dailycardinal, madisonatoz, badgerherald...

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On Friday, a friend and I trekked over to Inka Heritage, a small Peruvian restaurant tucked in one of the storefronts on the noisy and dingy South Park Street. The outside of the restaurant did not look very appealing, like many of the places on Park Street at night. However, the inside looked quite classy and was decorated with dried corn, Hispanic art, and candles.

Inka Heritage is a restaurant that serves traditional Peruvian fare and the menu even has the added quirks of phrases obviously lost in translation. Many of the dishes near the end of the menu are described as aphrodisiac, including a seafood soup that is "100% aphrodisiac!!!" The restaurant seems like it should belong on State Street and probably suffers in customers precisely because of it. Unfortunately, given its location, I was not aware the restaurant existed until a couple of weeks ago.

Interestingly, the first time I went to Inka was several weeks ago when a friend and I were supposed to grab a cheap lunch at La Hacienda (across the street and slightly north) but met up with a mob of protesters who were demanding higher wages to workers at the restaurant. They were pretty effective, because we ultimately decided against crossing the picket line and opted for the twice as expensive Inka Heritage further down the street. Moral of the story? It feels better to spend money on dinner at Inka than lunch.

A lot of the items on the menu are slightly on the pricey side, but there are several very delicious and cheaper (9-10) entrees. The restaurant also has many seafood dishes for those seafood lovers out there. Also, probably because I am not exactly certain what traditional Peruvian food is, I feel that a lot of the dishes have an Asian and Indian slant to them rather than a Mexican or faux-Mexican (aka chain Mexican restaurant) taste.

There are two major perks to going to Inka and both involve the earlier portion of the meal. First is the salty crunchy giant corn nuts (photo) that are presented as an appetizer along with a spicy chili guacamole dip (photo). Second is their most popular and very distinct drink: chicha morada (photo). Since no description of the drink can really do it justice, I will simply post the description of the drink directly from the menu: delicious purple corn refreshment with pineapple and apple water, cinnamon and lime. Miraculously, the flavors balance out nicely, and I really can't enjoy a meal there without ordering the mysterious chicha morada.

Some of the highlights from Inka for my two visits include Arroz con Mariscos (aphrodisiac rice), Aji de Pollo, and the Pescado a la Chorrillana. The aphrodisiac rice had a very nice seafood flavor, the chicken dish was incredibly savory, and the fish in the pescado dish was cooked perfectly and the fish was flaky and soft. Other dishes I had could have used some improvement. The Yuca a la Huancaina had a distinct texture to the plant, but the accompanying cheese dip tasted like normal nacho cheese sauce and left much to be desired. I also ordered a lamb dish, Seco de Cordero, which turned out to taste a lot like Indian food but was unfortunately a little too salty. This did not mix well with previously having the salty corn nuts. One gripe I have about Inka is that some of the waitstaff could use a little more training; our waiter on this visit only described the most expensive dishes on the menu and a previous waiter didn't really come to check on how we were doing.

Overall, the food at Inka is pretty good, especially if you want to try something a little exotic. However, besides their few outstanding dishes, there is not too much at Inka that would warrant many visits in the future.