The Secret to the Chang Family Ceviche? It's in the Sauce.

It all started when Fernando and Valerie Chang went searching for a taste of home. The siblings had followed their chef father, Fernando Sr., from northern Peru to Miami in 2001, and, though South Florida restaurants served ceviches and tiraditos aplenty, there were none that delivered the puckering punch they grew up eating. “The north is considered more aggressive from a seasoning standpoint,” says Fernando.

The diagnosis: American limes don’t have the acidity of their Peruvian cousins, and the potency of most leche de tigres is further diluted with 40 to 60 percent fish stock. The Changs also found common additions to the marinade/cooking liquid—celery, ginger, and cilantro stems—distracting.  

So over the course of years, first at home and then in professional kitchens, they stripped away the excess and developed a leche de tigre made with just four ingredients: Persian limes, garlic, salt, and ají limo (frozen rather than fresh to manage food costs). “It was clear to us we didn’t need to add things,” says Fernando. “The more we simplified, the better it got. That’s the Japanese way of thinking. In Peru we’re used to adding more.”

Unadulterated and assertive, this streamlined leche became the mother of all sauces in a burgeoning restaurant empire they’ve built with their father. There’s Itamae, a Nikkei-style sushi counter; casual B-Side in the 1-800-Lucky food hall; and Raya, a cart serving Chifa cuisine at Miami Heat games. 

“Leche is the most important thing for me,” says Valerie. “I don’t think Itamae would have gone the same way if it wasn’t for how much attention we paid to it, and how different it is. When people go to eat there for the first time, they get smacked around by the ceviche. They’re like, ‘We’re hooked.’” 

In the early days, they’d make 80 quarts of leche de tigre a week, with each of the limes squeezed by hand. Juicers and citrus presses, the Changs say, release too much bitter lime oil into leche. It’s a subtle but critical difference, and even as their volume has increased, their staff (somewhat begrudgingly) still hand-squeezes the juice—20 cases alone to kick off basketball season. “If a machine could do a sufficient job, trust me, we’d be using one,” says Valerie.

The base recipe combines one case of limes (about 5½ quarts juice) with 400 to 450 grams of salt, 200 grams of garlic, and 250 grams of ají limo; the chiles get strained out and repurposed into a house yuzu kosho. From there, the Changs’ signature leche de tigre might go on to dress Itamae’s cebiche tradicional with black grouper, crispy corn nuts, choclo, and murasaki sweet potatoes, or it might take on new flavors. 

Variations include serrano leche made by blending charred chiles with garlic and onions and loosening the mixture with the mother sauce. Fernando is particularly fond of bright habanero and Scotch bonnet leches, as well as ají amarillo and ají charapita. He might also throw ginger or lemongrass into the mix.

Valerie, who now focuses on B-Side and Raya, has made a shellfish leche de tigre, producing a base with shrimp shells and heads, lobster roe, and ají panca to which she adds the mother. Their tomato-bird’s eye chile leche “is like drinking a gazpacho with great acid,” according to Fernando, who avoids most fruit additions, finding them overly sweet (soursop is a notable exception). “I’m conflicted. Not every leche variation, for me, should be a leche. It has to have a certain personality. If you add certain fruits, they take away from that.”

More than a vehicle for cooking and seasoning raw seafood, Valerie says she reaches for the mother leche anytime a dish needs acidity. It doesn’t always work, but their leche has spiked ranch dressing, tartare sauce for a katsu sando, and mayonnaise for B-Side’s You Only Live Twice Roll with crispy white fish, hamachi, and cucumber. 

In a rare gift from COVID, the Changs discovered they could freeze the mother leche de tigre for up to a month. “When we closed abruptly, I felt so bad about all the product we had, so we Cryovac-ed the leche, froze it, and tasted it every week,” says Valerie, noting that it’s imperative to same-day squeeze, bag, and freeze the juice. It was an operational leap forward for an ingredient that touches 60 percent of their menu. It also opened up the potential for sharing the Changs’ singularly bold leche de tigre with a wider audience. “We want to have our leche in the frozen section of the grocery store,” says Valerie. “I hope to start by next year.”

Caroline Hatchett is the senior editor of Plate.