The Paiche

Available Now

Paiche, the giant of the Amazon

Arapaima gigas, known as pirarucu in Brazil

Paiche is the great white fish of the Amazon, prized across Peru and Brazil for generations and still new to most kitchens beyond South America. Arapaima gigas is one of the largest freshwater fish on Earth, an air breather that rises to the surface of the warm, flooded forests where the species has lived for millions of years. Ours is raised at origin in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian rainforest, in its native habitat, without antibiotics, and traceable to a single farm and a single source.

On the board it shows a firm, bright white flesh with a broad, even flake and very little fat. Filleted, it is completely boneless, a clean loin with no pin bones to trim around, and it carries a brigade from ceviche and tiradito to a hard sear, a slow grill, or the smoke of a moqueca. Its collagen sets a deep golden crust under high heat and holds its structure where softer fish break, and it stays forgiving on the pass because the flesh is rich enough not to dry. The flavor reads mild and clean, closer to the river than the sea.

Because it is farmed in its own waters, paiche reaches your kitchen year round rather than by season, with none of the pressure that follows wild Amazonian stocks. Its mercury is laboratory tested below 0.05 milligrams per kilogram, well under the FDA limit, a reassurance few large fish can offer. It sits in the culinary class of halibut and Chilean sea bass, with the same density and presence under the knife, yet its character is entirely its own.

Legal and protected

Traded under CITES

Paiche is a protected Amazonian species, listed on Appendix II of CITES, the international convention that governs the trade of wild animals and plants. Appendix II does not mean the fish is off limits. It means its trade is watched and controlled so that wild populations are never put at risk. The wild paiche was fished hard across the Amazon for generations, and that oversight is what allows the rivers to recover.

We raise ours at origin, in its native waters in the Peruvian Amazon, so nothing we sell is ever taken from the wild. Every fish that reaches your kitchen was farmed, not caught, which means choosing our paiche takes pressure off the wild rivers instead of adding to it. It is a rare thing, a luxury fish whose supply helps the species it comes from.

Every shipment leaves Peru under a CITES export permit issued by the national authorities, granted only when the fish was raised lawfully and its trade does no harm. For you that means each order arrives fully legal, documented, and traceable at every step, with the paperwork already handled. Clean provenance, on paper as well as on the plate.