Q'ero Restaurant is a women-owned, third-generation Peruvian kitchen on South Coast Highway 101 in Old Encinitas, serving family recipes rooted in Lima's cevicherias and highland comfort-food traditions since the business launched as a bakery in Leucadia in 2000. Executive chef Monica Szepesy's menu builds around leche de tigre-cured ceviches, hand-folded empanadas with house-made panqa sauce, and braised lomo saltado, contributing to the Latin dining corridor along the 101 that includes Puntamar. Peruvian superfood ingredients—lucuma, maca root, aji amarillo, chicha morada—appear across appetizers through desserts, with the tres leches cake constructed from a triple-milk soak over sponge baked in-house. The dining room doubles as a gallery selling Peruvian paintings, prints, and crafts, a cultural-retail hybrid echoed by the San Dieguito Art Guild's exhibition program nearby. Private dining seats up to 36 guests and the kitchen operates a BYO wine program, while ceviche preparation relies on citrus-acid denaturation of raw fish proteins at precise acid-to-flesh ratios that achieve texture without thermal cooking.