The Restaurant
La Mar Cebicheria is the Santiago location of the Peruvian seafood concept that Lima chef Gastón Acurio launched in Lima in 2005 and has since extended to São Paulo, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Bogotá. The Santiago room sits in a freestanding two-story building on Nueva Costanera in Vitacura — the same restaurant row as Boragó, Ambrosia, and Casa Las Cujas — with a sun-flooded ground-floor dining room, an open ceviche bar at the entrance, and a covered rooftop terrace under a vine-wrapped pergola that opens for service from October through April. The terrace, with its sight lines to the Andes on a clear day, is the most romantic outdoor dining table in the Vitacura district.
The kitchen is run under Acurio's group-wide culinary direction by chef Pedro Schiaffino and a Peruvian senior team that rotates between the Lima and Santiago kitchens. The menu is unmistakably Peruvian — a long ceviche section anchored by the classical clásico of corvina with leche de tigre, red onion, sweet potato, and choclo; a tiradito programme with five rotating preparations (a Nikkei influence is clear in the ají amarillo with sesame and the soy-based aderezo de tres pimientos); a strong cooked-seafood section including a black-shell-mussel chupe, a seafood arroz, and a wood-grilled corvina with green causa; and a desserts list that includes the suspiro a la limeña and a passion-fruit sorbet that has become a signature.
The bar programme is a Pisco-led operation — about forty Pisco varietals from both Peru and Chile, twenty-eight house cocktails (the Chilcano de maracuyá and the El Capitán are the room's signatures), and a Nikkei-influenced sake selection. The wine list runs about 130 references with a focused Chilean white-wine section and a confident Argentine Malbec depth. Service is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese; pacing is unhurried, and the room's combination of Peruvian seafood discipline, Vitacura address, and the rooftop terrace makes it a reliable date and small-team destination across most of the year.
Why This Is Santiago’s First Date Pick
For a first date in Santiago, La Mar Cebicheria solves the brief in three different ways depending on the season. In summer, the rooftop terrace under the pergola — Andes view, low candle light, the sound of the bar fountain below — is the most romantic outdoor table in Vitacura. In winter, the sun-flooded ground-floor room is bright at lunch and warmly lit at dinner. And the menu format — a long ceviche section with multiple small plates designed to share — generates the kind of natural conversation rhythm that an à la carte meal of separate courses rarely produces. The price ceiling, at about CLP 70,000 per person before wine, also keeps the evening generous without committing to a fine-dining production.
Community Poll
What is the best occasion for La Mar Cebicheria?
Join free to vote and leave a review.
Leave a Review
Registered members get published by default; guest reviews are moderated first.