#13 in Buenos Aires50 Best Discovery · Gastón AcurioPalermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires$$$ · Peruvian Cevicheria
Gastón Acurio's Lima classic transplanted with its soul intact. The leche de tigre is worth the airfare, and the Pisco list is worth staying for.
9.3Food
8.8Ambience
8.3Value
About La Mar Cebichería
La Mar Cebichería Buenos Aires is the Argentine outpost of one of Latin America's most important restaurant concepts. The original La Mar opened in Lima in 2005 under Gastón Acurio. Chef, entrepreneur, and the single most influential ambassador for Peruvian cuisine globally. And it became the template for everything that followed: ceviche served at peak freshness, piscos mixed with Andean-level precision, a room calibrated to feel like a Lima beach restaurant even when located a continent away. The Buenos Aires iteration opened in 2015 in a converted Palermo Hollywood mansion, and within twelve months was recognised by 50 Best as one of Latin America's most significant restaurants.
The space is pure Acurio theatre. A double-height dining room with a vast open cevichería-style counter at the centre, white-tiled walls, nautical pendant lighting, and a glass-walled pisco bar stocked with over 120 Peruvian labels. The room seats 160 across the main floor, a mezzanine, and a garden patio that opens in the Buenos Aires summer. Service is warm, fast, and knowledgeable. Many of the senior team trained in Lima before relocating.
The menu is built around ceviche in its Peruvian orthodoxy. The classic ceviche cebicheria. Corvina in leche de tigre, rocoto chili, red onion, sweet potato, corn. Is the signature and the benchmark. The tiradito Nikkei applies Japanese technique to the format; the causas (layered potato cakes with avocado, crab, or octopus) show Acurio's genius for transforming simple ingredients into architectural compositions. From the hot kitchen: arroz con mariscos, chaufa de mariscos (Peruvian-Chinese fried rice), and an anticucho of wagyu heart that regularly sells out before 10pm.
The pisco programme is serious. The bar list runs through every major Peruvian distillery and style, from Quebranta to Italia to Acholado, served straight, as Pisco Sours, as Chilcano, or as one of the house-invented cocktails the bar team rotates quarterly. The wine list covers Argentina and Chile with a Peruvian twist (the Tacama and Tabernero labels from Peru's Ica valley deserve the detour). For Peruvian cooking in Argentina this is the ceiling. And given Lima is a two-hour flight, that ceiling is remarkably close to the original.
Why La Mar is Perfect for a First Date
La Mar gets everything right for an early date: a dramatic room that does the work of making the evening feel like an event, a menu structured around sharing (ceviches, causas, and tiraditos are natural three-plate introductions), and an all-in price point that feels generous rather than showy. Order a pisco sour each, three ceviches for the table, and let the conversation build. The garden patio, when open, is among the most romantic dining spaces in Palermo Hollywood. Easier to book than Don Julio, cheaper than Aramburu, and signalling a date who pays attention to detail.
Why La Mar Works for Impressing Clients
Visiting clients who have already done Buenos Aires's great parrillas appreciate being taken somewhere that expands their sense of what the city offers. La Mar answers that brief. It is serious, architecturally impressive, gastronomically precise, and rooted in a cuisine your client likely has not yet explored in this country. The pisco flight (four pours, explained) is a great opening act while the table settles. The wagyu anticucho and the chaufa are ideal centrepieces for a party of four to six.
He booked La Mar for our first date and I knew within ten minutes it was going to be a good evening. The ceviche cebicheria is still the best version of the dish I've eaten outside of Lima. Pisco sour, causa, tiradito, shared octopus. Three hours gone, we're getting married in November. La Mar, thank you.
Henrik S.December 2025
Occasion: Impress Clients
Brought two Lima-based investors who were, understandably, sceptical of Peruvian food outside Peru. By the second ceviche they were quiet. By the chaufa they were taking photos. By the anticucho they had moved the agenda item we'd been stuck on for two months. La Mar did that.
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