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Mango Peruvian Cuisine
Mango Peruvian Cuisine is a restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. It is located in the Washington Avenue Loft District of downtown St. Louis. The restaurant was opened in 2004 by Chef Jorge Calvo, his wife Nori Calvo, and their family friends Sherry and Paul Sawchak. It specializes in authentic Peruvian food and is recognized by by Riverfront Times as St. Louis’ “Best Kept Secret. Every year Mango Peruvian Cuisine participates in a Dining Out for Life fundraiser to help people living with HIV and AIDS in St. Louis. During this fundraiser a portion of each check goes to support St. Louis Effort for AIDS (C. Calvo Larrew, personal communication, April 13, 2013).

History
The Mango Peruvian Cuisine restaurant opened in Shrewsbury, St. Louis in 2004. Chef Jorge Calvo owned and operated numerous restaurants in Peru before starting Mango Peruvian Cuisine with his wife Nori Calvo and their close family friends Sherry and Paul Sawchak. Since opening the authentic Peruvian restaurant has significantly increased in popularity. In 2010 Riverfront Times voted the restaurant Best Kept Secret (Happy Hour Division). In 2011 the business was consolidated to a second location. The original Shrewsbury restaurant was closed and all efforts focused on a new location in Washington Avenue Loft District of downtown St. Louis. Chef Jorge Calvo and his wife Nori were featured on the KSDK channel in June of 2012. They were part of a Show Me St. Louis segment called “Ceviche from Mango”. The restaurant received additional publicity in February 2013 when singer Erin Bode mentioned Mango in St. Louis Magazine’s “The Greatest Thing I Ever Ate” article.

Peruvian Food
Peruvian food originated from the Spanish cuisine that was brought in with immigrants and the indigenous peoples. Because of the arrival of immigrants from different regions around the world, latter influences on the Peruvian food include cuisines from Italy, China, West Africa, and Japan. Since the immigrants had only a limited supply of ingredients from their home regions, they had enriched Peru’s traditional food using ingredients native to Peru. The most common ingredients found in almost every Peruvian dish is rice, potatoes, lamb, pork, chicken, and fish, as well the Peruvian hot pepper, also known as “ají”. Most traditional dishes include one of three different kinds of ají: yellow ají pepper, red ají pepper, and red rocoto pepper. Some of the most popular Peruvian dishes are Ceviche, Lomo saltado, and Papa a la Huancaina.

Menu
Mango has both a lunch and dinner menu. The lunch menu includes hot and chilled dishes, sandwiches, specialties, and desserts like the Torta de Chocolate, a family recipe of chocolate cake and fudge icing. The dinner menu is somewhat larger with hot and chilled starters, soups and salads, main courses of carne (beef), pollo (chicken), and pescado (fish), as well as desserts. There are also several vegetarian choices on both menus, such as a daily selection of Queso con Membrillo. There are also nightly specials of fresh fish and other seasonal offerings (C. Calvo Larrew, personal communication, April 13, 2013). The menu is pocket-friendly with a hot lunch dish of Yuca Frita, fried yuca with a spicy dipping sauce, priced at $4. The most expensive dish on the menu is $26. It is Pescado a lo Macho, a fish fillet topped with an assortment of seafood all in a sauce of spicy aji rocoto.

Daughter of Chef Jorge Calvo, Cinthia Calvo Larrew declares Lomo Saltado one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes (personal communication, April 13, 2013). Lomo Saltado is “a stir fry of beef with sweet onions, tomatoes and Peruvian spices” (C. Calvo Larrew, personal communication, April 13, 2013). She calls Mango’s signature dish the Ceviche, fish cold-cured in citrus juices, garlic, onions and Peruvian spices (C. Calvo Larrew, personal communication, April 13, 2013). As can be seen by this, the authenticity of the dishes is an important part of the menu.

Reviews
Mango Peruvian Cuisine has earned several awards since its opening, including the Riverfront Times “The Best of St. Louis” for South American Cuisine and Late Night Happy Hour and Alive Magazine’s “Best South American Cuisine”. OpenTable.com also granted Mango the “Diner’s Choice Award”.

On December 2, 2009, shortly after opening its downtown location, Ian Froeb of the Riverfront Times critiqued the new Mango. He first mentioned the layout of the restaurant which emphasizes the bar right at the entrance, surrounded by stools, with the dining area just past it. He then discusses the food: “The pork tamal looks as expected, a cylinder of masa flour steamed, in this case, inside a banana leaf, but the texture might startle you, as very finely chopped or even ground peanuts contrast the exterior moistness with a slight crunch. The flavor is also surprising: The masa's sweetness and slight heat yields not to the savory pork, but to the briny snap of green olive”.

Froeb also talks about the ceviche, one of Mango’s signature dishes. “Ceviche "cooks" food using the acids in citrus juice, so the first bite of the tilapia brought a stinging smack of lime and lemon tartness. A mild chile heat followed. There was no fish taste at all, which is probably for the best: Wild tilapia can have a muddy flavor, while to describe the farmed variety (what I had on my plate, most likely) as "mild" is to use too strong a word. A light-bodied, palate-sparking appetizer”. He goes on to give his opinion of other dishes and finishes his article by saying that “Like the dishes here that need more vibrant flavors, service in general at Mango could use a tad more seasoning…But consider how far Mango has come in the past five years: What's significant isn't that St. Louis has a Peruvian restaurant, or even that it now has a Peruvian restaurant downtown, but that among the pricey lofts and slick eateries, Mango belongs”.

Amy Burdge of FEAST St. Louis writes a weekly recommendation for dinner before a St. Louis cultural event. She also has a blog entitled Eat It, St. Louis! dedicated to the love of food. On February 21, 2013, Burdge suggested going to Mango Peruvian Cuisine before seeing comedian Brian Regan. She says: “Located on Washington Avenue, Mango Peruvian Cuisine offers St. Louis a taste of Peru. Start your dinner with the Cevice Mixto, tilapia, mussels, shrimp and octopus cold-cured in freshly squeezed citrus juices with Peruvian peppers, onions, garlic and cilantro. Carry on the seafood theme with the Pescado A Lo Macho. The dish features a fresh fillet of fish topped with a variety of seafood in a spicy aji rocoto sauce served with white rice and golden potato”. She claims that by doing this, you will have a meal “that makes you feel like you’re sitting in first class”.

While Froeb had some complaints about his visit to the new building in 2009, both he and Burdge found the food very satisfactory and on par with the downtown St. Louis experience.