By Paul Reidinger

ALTHOUGH PERUVIAN FOOD has been enjoying a season of favor in the past few years – we have had, by way of proof, restaurant openings of distinctly Peruvian character at Límon and Circolo and Mochica, among others – it is still a cuisine half-cloaked in the robes of exotica. In other words: not everyone has eaten it. Yet. A set of initiates asked me recently, as we made the passage to Pachi's through (seasonable) sheets of rain, what they might expect. I suggested: lots of seafood, a distant familial relation to Mexican seasonings, a Spanish or Asian touch here and there. They seemed satisfied, and we concentrated our attention on finding a place to park – a fiendishly difficult operation (why?) along outer Clement Street.

Pachi's opened late last year in a space that had been briefly occupied, the year before, by Lika, a wine-bar-with-eclectic-tapas spot. The interior, in its bronzed butteriness, doesn't look much different to me, though there is now a large paella pan mounted above the entryway. Pachi's does offer paella and it is good, though not, strictly speaking, Peruvian. The paella ($17) is called valenciana, and we agreed that it was one of the better restaurant versions of this venerable Spanish dish we've had. The grains of saffron rice were plump and moist but well differentiated, and there was no stinting on the chicken, prawns, calamari, scallops, and rounds of chorizo that topped up the cast-iron pan.

The restaurant also offers, in an Asiatic touch, what it calls alejandrinos ($5), a clutch of triangular cheese-stuffed wontons arranged on a plate around a dipping pot of smoked-paprika aioli. The wontons are named in honor of Alejandro Espinosa, longtime proprietor of Alejandro's, just a few blocks away; he served as a mentor to Pachi Calvo y Perez, who has borrowed at least one page from the master by bestowing his first name on his (first) restaurant.

Still, one does not go to a Peruvian restaurant for Spanish food, no matter how good it is or how profound and enduring the connection between mother country and former colony, nor for wontons. One goes, rather, for such delicacies as seviche, which Pachi's offers in several variants, including the aptly named mojito de camarones ($8), which bathes jumbo prawns in a sweet-tart mix of lime juice, ginger, cilantro, and sugar that will be familiar to aficionados of Cuban cocktails, and the more mainstream mixto ($9), which includes prawns, scallops, squid, clams, and rock cod in a marinade of lime juice, ginger, and aji amarillo, a Chilean chile of considerable citrus-scented heat that also brings a bright yellow-orange glow to the plate. A scattering of yam slices and toasted corn kernels (cancha) completes the tableau.

Seafood is presented in an impressive array of guises. There is a prawn chowder ($7) whose thick milk-and-potato broth is ladled about a single giant prawn still sporting its space-alien antennae. Olinda's shellfish roast ($15) brings together gulf shrimp, a crab leg, clams, mussels, scallops, rock cod, and squid on a fajitas-worthy cast-iron skillet. Causa limeña ($9) is a kind of napoleon: a layered disk of aji-and-lime mashed potato, crab meat, avocado, and corn, with a generous dribbling of salsa criolla (a combination of tomato, onion, garlic, jalapeño, and red vinegar) to bind these generally mild-mannered constituents together. And for the cautious, there is a halibut filet ($15), dusted with plantain powder, sautéed, and served on a bed of mashed white sweet potato (boniato) I found a bit too sweet, particularly with the accompanying mango salsa.

Meat lovers need not despair: Pachi's menu does include nonmaritime flesh, including lamb, pork, an Argentine-style grilled steak, and an excellent lomo saltado ($14), which amounts to a cross between steak frites and beef stroganoff, with a Peruvian twist. The dish consists of sirloin strips sautéed with onion, tomato, garlic, and cilantro; the meat is then given a demiglace of balsamic and soy and piled onto a heap of fat french fries – with, inexplicably, a starch-overload mound of rice on the side. While the serving sizes are for the most part in the reasonable range, this is the one dish we came across that even a hungry person might not be able to finish, particularly if said person had an eye to dessert.

The restaurant's sweets tilt toward fruit and tropicality, with plenty of mango, coconut, and passion fruit and just a single chocolate entry. We liked a flan naranja ($3.50), essentially crème caramel with orange-scented caramel, but we loved the alfajores ($3.50) so much that we had them again on a subsequent visit. These are sugar cookies filled with dulce de leche and half-buried under a snowfall of powdered sugar; they don't seem like much to the eye – a smear of white and cream tones – but the dulce de leche (sugar caramelized in milk) is an electrifying presence, and even in tiny amounts it provides enormous lift. If someone deep in the Peruvian pastry past wasn't named Alfajore, then it might be time for some revisionist history.

Pachi's. 1801 Clement (at 19th Ave.), S.F. (415) 422-0502. Dinner: Tues.-Thurs. and Sun., 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m. Brunch: Sat.-Sun., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Beer and wine. American Express, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Moderately noisy. Wheelchair accessible.