South Padre Island – When it comes to snacking on South Padre Island, there are all sorts of savory selections. But there’s a small restaurant sitting right on Padre Boulevard has built a big following thanks to a sought-after meal, ceviche and it’s simply known as Ceviche Ceviche.
“The hardest thing [about having a Cerviche restaurant] would be all the prep work,” owner Carlos Alaniz said.
Carlos Alaniz and his wife Alana are local high school sweethearts who have been married since 2006. They built this business together and both credit each other for their ceviche success.
“She runs everything,” Carlos said. “She’s the heart of the whole business, really, you know. She’s a machine. She does it all day long. We go from 5:30 in the morning, we go all the way to 10 o’clock at night.”
Considering that the only cooking done here is more of a chemical process, called denaturation, the prepping is pivotal in the pursuit of perfection.
“Ceviche, technically, would be the process of curing the fish in lime, and salt, and whatever herbs and spices you want to put into it,” Carlos said. “As opposed to the fish being completely raw, as you would in like sushi or like sashimi style, you would see the fish looks cooked, and the shrimp looks cooked too. It’s completely opaque, so it looks like you boiled it, except we have a curing process that we follow, that we go through to make our ceviche. Since we got so many limes and we’ve got so much citrus down here, it was so easy for us to have a curing process to make our fish and shrimp that way. “
While the typical form of ceviche is the most popular, at Ceviche Ceviche you’ll find all sorts of ingredients to put with your selection of mahi mahi and shrimp.
“You’d be surprised as to how good like … everybody comes in with the same attitude, you know, ‘I’m used to the classic. I’m used to the pico on it,’ but we tell them, ‘Hey, you know, put a little bit of mango, or put strawberries on there, put some celery, or green onion. Pineapple in there. Melon,’”Carlos said. “Cantaloupes is one of my favorite ingredients to put in the ceviche.”
Fresh, delicious, and amazing, Cerviche Cerviche in South Padre Island is well worth a stop on the Texas Bucket List.
“We don’t want anybody to kick the bucket, right,” Carlos said. “We’re all about the good vibes. We’re just a fraction of what it is to come to the island.”