A new Peruvian takeout restaurant has opened in a familiar location on Route 2 in Veazie, offering up a new cuisine for the Bangor area and sharing space with another local eatery also offering a popular world fare.
Mi Causa opened on Monday at 1492 State St., in the same location as Korean Dad, a Korean restaurant that opened last year. The two restaurants will share space, with Mi Causa offering takeout meals between noon and 5 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and Korean Dad offering takeout meals on Saturdays between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m.
Owner Luis Alberto Perez-Narváez, a native of Peru now living in Bangor and who goes by Betho, will offer up Peruvian dishes that combine Latin American classics with traditional Indigenous ingredients like potatoes, yucca and chicha de jora, a corn-based vinegar-like fermented beverage first made by the Inca more than 1,000 years ago.
“These are the things I grew up eating and the things I loved to cook,” said Perez-Narváez, who moved to Maine about six years ago and formerly had a house painting business. “Opening a restaurant was one of my dreams when I came here.”
Current menu items include the pan-Latin classic arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) and seco a la norteña, which is beef marinated in chicha de jora and served in a savory stew with rice and beans. Papas a la huancaina — potatoes served in a pepper and queso fresco sauce — and fried pork and fried yucca round out the menu, though Perez-Narváez intends to change up dishes regularly.
Peru is renowned for its unique food, which combines Indigenous and Spanish cuisines as well as Chinese, African and other European influences.
With its diversity of climate systems, there are a huge array of different ingredients that are native to the country, from quinoa, peppers and potatoes to fruits found only in the Andes or Amazon rainforest. It’s probably most famous for dishes like ceviche (fresh seafood marinated in citrus) and the aforementioned papas a la huancaina.
This is the first Peruvian restaurant to open in the Bangor area.
Mi Causa’s menu will be posted each week on its Facebook page. To place an order, call 207- 922-2893.
