Peruvian Flair in Vancouver's Chinatown

Blue fin tuna and crab causa wrapped with nori and caviar

Vancouver's Chinatown continues to gentrify with the opening of Uchu, a fancy seafood restaurant "with Peruvian soul" a few days ago.

It is the sister restaurant to the wildly successful Suyo, a modern Peruvian restaurant that I and two friends ate dinner at during the summer. We enjoyed the various dishes not only for their colourful presentations, but also for the array of textures and flavours that made each bite interesting and delicious.

High-ceiling bar with a long counter

So I was excited to hear Suyo chef-owner Ricardo Valverde was opening another place -- and in Chinatown, I had to check it out when I got an invite to the media preview the day before it officially opened.

Uchu is in the space formerly occupied by Sai Woo which served no-so-good Chinese food, then was replaced with Kosoo Pocha, which served Korean tapas.

Valverde and his team took over the space in March 2025 and spent 11 months renovating it into a high ceiling open bar and kitchen concept serving mostly ceviche-style seafood bites that we got to try the other evening.

They included items like oyster cevichero, a fresh oyster topped with leche de tigre espuma, or tiger's milk foam, blue fin tuna and crab causa, or potato wrapped in nori and finished with a few caviar pearls.

There were also a kind of salmon sushi with a rice cracker on top, and for dessert dulce de leche, and a sweet caramel creme with a honeycomb on top. 

Various Peruvian-inspired bites

But it seems the soul of Ucha is the bar where the cocktails are made. Valverde explained that before the restaurant opened, the team went down to Peru and visited several restaurants that are in the World's 50 Best list and at each place tried about 10 cocktails, as well as many dishes.

For those who are looking for spirit-free cocktails like, me, the chicha morada was like a fancy juice made from purple corn, pineapple, green apple, cinnamon and lime, and the pachamama that was a non-alcoholic Old Fashioned using rose, black tea, amarno, chocolate and palo santo with an ice cube with "Ucha" embossed on it.

At the party there were some elderly Chinese men taking in the food and drink and we asked one who they were. He explained they were with the Chan Wing Chung Tong Society of Canada, who rented the space to the restaurant group.

We asked him how much the rent was, and he said it was four figures which we thought was very reasonable for a restaurant like this, charging Suyo prices in Chinatown. 

Spirit-free Old Fashioned

It will be interesting to see how Uchu does in this location, will people be interested in coming here in the evenings with drug addicts hanging out on the streets? Nevertheless we do wish Valverde all the best because Vancouver is seeing more places close than open at the moment. It's a challenging time in the restaurant industry when people can't really afford to eat out these days...