EVA RESTAURANTE, Ecuadoran

Peru and Ecuador both lay claim to seviche -- the technique of "cooking" raw fish without heat in a citrus marinade. We're neutral on the issue, but an intriguing and delicious variation on the theme can be found at Eva, a humble Ecuadoran storefront on Brooklyn's semi-industrial Fourth Avenue, out on the far southwestern fringes of Park Slope. A junk-shop chandelier hangs from the ceiling next to a disco ball, and Spanish-language TV competes with Spanish music on the jukebox. The waitress lays out paper napkins imprinted, inexplicably, with the Neiman Marcus logo and recommends the seviche mixto (at $12, the most expensive item on the menu). You don't have to take her word for it -- nearly every customer in the joint has already ordered the same heaping bowl of shrimp and tuna submerged in a fragrant broth redolent of cilantro, red onions, and lime juice (more of which should be squeezed from the accompanying lime wedges, delivered with a saucer of fiery orange-colored chili-pepper sauce). Eva calls this seviche, but because it's served hot, we call it soup. The lime juice in the marinade isn't cooking the fish, the heat is, so instead of a few slices of delicate, barely opaque fluke or bass, you get a steaming bowl of hearty, citrus-perfumed fish soup full of plump little shrimp and huge hunks of dark tuna. Its citric tang is counterbalanced perfectly by a glass of smooth, ice-cold Quaker, a drink made from oatmeal, flavored with apples, cinnamon, and sugar. The result is a wholesome and surprisingly refreshing sort of oat milkshake. Its national origin is unknown.

Eva Restaurante, 551 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn; 718-788-9354.

FLOR'S KITCHEN, Venezuelan

Venezuelan cooking makes it absolutely clear that North Americans, Libby's and Green Giant notwithstanding, have a lot to learn about corn. Why settle for canned kernels, or even summertime's juicy cobs, when you can feast on arepas (stuffed corn cakes), empanadas criollas (made of corn flour), and cachapas (fresh-corn pancakes) at Flor's Kitchen, the tiny Venezuelan restaurant that opened eight months ago in the East Village? Flor Villazan's family recipes are the South American equivalent of the neighborhood's Ukrainian comfort food: solid, soulful, filling, and, in the case of the arepas, satisfyingly starchy and just a tad greasy. If you want to conserve space on your tiny tabletop (there are only six in the cute, if bare-bones, place, which guarantees a wait), you'll want to order in stages, polishing off each appetizer to make room for the next. (This philosophy seems to apply to the kitchen as well: At busy times, some of the staff hustle out to the market to replenish ingredients. Be patient.) You could easily make a meal of appetizers. The spongy arepas are stuffed with everything from beef or chicken to cheese, tuna, scrambled eggs, and, this being the East Village, tofu and vegetables. You can eat the Jamaican-patty-like empanadas criollas with your hands, but not the cachapa, which arrives off the griddle nicely browned and deliciously sweet in that inimitable corny way, under a blanket of melting mild white cheese. If appetite allows, proceed on to pabellon criollo, a national specialty that traces its lineage to ropa vieja, the Spanish assemblage of shredded flank steak in a peppery tomato sauce served with black beans, plantains, and rice. The accompanying hot avocado salsa (guasacaca) should be liberally spooned over all.

Flor's Kitchen, 149 First Avenue; 212-387-8949.

TIERRAS SALVADOREÑAS, El Salvadoran

El Salvador has as much of a maize fixation as Venezuela, and at Tierras Salvadoreñas, a spotlessly clean, quiet, friendly restaurant in Jackson Heights, corn reaches its apotheosis in two delectable forms. The menu translates pupusas as tortillas, but they're actually much closer to thickish, coaster-size corn-masa pancakes, fried on a griddle and stuffed with savory fillings like cheese, refried beans, and pork, all three of which appear together in the pupusa revuelta. Meant to be eaten with its accompanying garnishes of curtido, a pinkish, spicy coleslaw, and a subtly spicy red salsa, the pupusa is the ultimate snack food (three for $1.25 ), except maybe for the tamal de elote, a soft, delicate velvety corn tamale, served either with cheese or a crème fraîche-like cream. You could order these maize masterpieces singly or in combination platters that tack on rice, beans, sweet plantains, chorizo, and a briny semisoft cheese. Try the horchata, a sweetened cinnamon-and-rice-water beverage that comes in a tall soda-fountain glass. A menú de niños (children's menu) is a nice, if unnecessary, touch. What kid would prefer a beef cutlet to corn mush?

Tierras Salvadoreñas, 94-16 37th Avenue, Queens; 718-672-0853.

LA HACIENDA, Mexican

On a block of Spanish Harlem that gradually mutates from Puerto Rican to Mexican as you walk east, the four-year-old La Hacienda draws a mostly young, working-class Mexican crowd for fast, fresh food and live Latin music on the weekend. At first glance, there's just a window off the sidewalk that opens onto the grill, where tortillas and the slightly thicker, longer huaraches are frying. But a few steps lead down into a long, low-ceilinged dining room, where the country-garden motif is conveyed with trippy flower murals, a stuffed rooster, and faux terra-cotta roof shingles. Old black-and-white photos of dangerous banditos line one wall, along with the inevitable steer horns and saddles. Try the mole poblano de pollo, if it's available; the spicy, smoky sauce is impressively complex, a lush brown bath for a single drumstick with falling-off-the-bone meat (and for the warm corn tortillas that come wrapped in a cloth on the side). Chilaquiles is a fiery casserole of crumbled tortilla chips, chicken, and cheese in a spicy tomatillo sauce drizzled with cream and garnished with radish, onion, and avocado. Quesadillas come with such uncommon fillings as pumpkin flowers and huitlacoche, a corn fungus that tastes of the musty damp earth in the same unaccountably delicious way that truffles do. The tacos al pastor, filled with pork carved off a spit, are served with bits of pineapple to counter the pork's savory saltiness. You get a little box of Chiclets with your check, an appropriate gesture since chicle, or chewing gum, also originated south of the border.

La Hacienda, 219 East 116th Street; 212-987-1617.