Join the pisco party at Warike, Sydney

It's Friday night in Surry Hills and new-ish Peruvian joint Warike is jumping. South American families share sarten de pato – a duck paella buzzing with heirloom chillies – and chicha de jora, a type of celebratory corn beer once loved by the Incas. Smaller groups knock back oysters fired up with tiger's milk, while a bartender in constant motion ensures every pisco sour is perfectly chilled and balanced. There are a lot of pisco sours on a lot of tables.

There are plenty of couples, too, many with a semi-awkward vibe suggesting "second date". A guy behind us has almost certainly just googled "Peruvian food" in the loo and is eager to impress. "Tiger's milk is a citrus-based marinade," he tells his table-mate. "It doesn't actually come from a tiger, you know."

Indeed. Peruvian restaurants are few and far between in Sydney, so when Warike's menu lands teeming with words such as "butifarra", "chalaquita" and "aji de huacatay", our table needs guidance, too.

Warike's chipper staff are happy to provide it. "The butifarra is slow-cooked pork leg marinated with achiote spice, pepper, garlic, cumin and vinegar," explains owner Luis Guzman, who moved to Sydney from Lima in 2010. "Chalaquita could be defined as a fresh and sour salad: the classic mix is red onion, chilli, coriander and lime."

After preparing Peruvian meals for friends as a lockdown project, Guzman was inspired to launch a pop-up restaurant. In April, Warike opened at its permanent site and chef Hector Chunga was brought in to lead the kitchen.

That butifarra ($23) is thinly sliced and deeply delicious. Daubs of aioli spiked with rocoto – a Peruvian chilli – supply gentle heat while little grissini-style breadsticks add crunch. It's similar to what you might encounter in Lima at many modern restaurants riffing on tradition, rather than in the family-style cooking found at Peruvian cafe La Hacienda in the CBD.

Spanish colonisation had a huge influence on Peruvian cuisine, while Asian immigration led to Chifa-style cooking (a marriage of Chinese and Peruvian) and Japanese fusion Nikkei.

The latter is most prominent here, with dishes such as yellowfin tuna tiradito (fish sliced sashimi-style rather than cubed as in a ceviche) laid across fruity aji amarillo chilli sauce ($27). Sliced scallops and blue mackerel are bolstered by a smokier, vivid-yellow aji amarillo ($30) and topped with salmon roe and seaweed for an imposing thrum of the ocean.

Pureed sweet potato tempers the ceviche "clasico" ($27) invigorated by a tiger's milk kicking with ginger, chilli and lime. It whacks you around the chops with flavour, while toasted chulpe corn adds texture against giving hunks of kingfish. If Warike served nothing but ceviche and tiraditos, it would still be worth putting on your dance card for a night of zippy seafood and the best pisco sours ($20) in town.

I can see the appeal for date nights – there's soft lighting, compelling wines and semi-regular live music – but it's a better place to bring a group and share rich cuts of meat.

Charcoal-grilled scotch fillet, say, with a soy and sherry vinegar-sharpened lomo saltado sauce ($52) or muscular anticuchos ox-heart skewers (two for $24) with a salsa of minty huacatay on the side.

Beef rib ($59) is cooked for more than two days in a "seco" braise of Peruvian peppers, coriander, red miso and mirin. It's fabulously tasty, still with a bit of fight in it after all those hours spent breaking down, but still very much "knife-optional". Thank goodness, because it's also served on one of those horrible slate tiles which make cutlery sound like fingernails on a blackboard.

A word to the wise: if you're jonesing for a side of golden-roasted spuds to accompany all this, papas y choclo ($14) are not the potatoes you're after. Instead, expect four pucks of cold, pressed mash covered in a cheesy huancaina sauce with condensed milk and onions. It's one of the few Peruvian dishes I can't get excited about.

However, I'm all on board for a baked-to-order pudding ($22) bursting with fondant made from lucuma, a Peruvian fruit that tastes like caramel.

Rare (for Australia at least) ingredients such as lucuma, coupled with sound ideas in the kitchen, make Warike one of the most unique restaurant openings of the year – and I'm a bit upset that I took so long to get here. Don't make the same mistake: book in for a pisco party or second date today.

Vibe: Pisco-fuelled adventure built on tradition

Go-to dish: Ceviche "clasico" ($27)

Drinks: Short list with a focus on Argentinian and Chilean wines, Peruvian beers and cocktails

Cost: About $160 for two, excluding drinks

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine