Ceviche, no matter how you spell it, is a simple but dazzling dish. It’s essentially raw fish salad “cooked” in citrus juice and onion, maybe jazzed up with spices and a dash of olive oil. When prepared well, it tastes like the salty, sharp zing of the ocean.

Peru, Spain, Mexico, and many Caribbean countries claim to be the first to come up with the dish, but it’s most likely from Peru, where archeologists suggest natives were eating it 2,000 years ago.

Ceviche comes in endless variations, based on where it’s prepared—with coriander in Nicaragua or tomatoes in parts of Mexico—and it has close cousins in Japan’s sashimi and the Philippines’ kinilaw.

While ceviche has become more common on menus around the