Leche de Tigre Cebicheria Peruana

Peruvian food is scarce in San Antonio, and Leche de Tigre treats that scarcity as license to do it properly rather than safely. Choclo runs through the entire menu, its kernels blown up comically large, showing up cooked into the classico ceviche's lime brightness, tangled into the nikkei's ponzu, then fried alongside crackling pork belly. That's a kitchen using one ingredient to argue three different points, and winning each time.

The bachiche is the dish that proves the point outright: sashimi scallops set in a pool of leche de tigre spiked with parmesan, sharp acid against silky fat, salt doing the work of a sauce that shouldn't need help but gets it anyway. The room reads as a place built for a date or a friend night out, but the plates aren't coasting on mood lighting. The cooking is specific enough to survive being looked at closely.

The recognition has arrived fast and kept arriving — a Michelin selection, back-to-back James Beard semifinalist nods for Best Chef Texas, and a finalist nod in between. None of it is the reason to go. The reason is a menu that treats an underrepresented cuisine as worth doing right, not just doing at all.