A quest for the best local ceviche.

The taste, like an erotic dream, lingers with me. Tart, fresh, melt-in-your-mouth fish diced into big, rough chunks, marinated in an herbed lime juice, spiced with garlic and chili, garnished with onions and cilantro, served chilled.

In Peru this September I ate this way for an entire week. Ever since, the taste has haunted my salivary glands.

So I set out to find something like it in Monterey County. But it turns out ceviche is as loosely defined as salsa. In Wiki terms, it’s simply “a form of citrus-marinated seafood appetizer, popular in many Latin American countries.” The Chilean version generally features sugar-cube-sized fish chunks and a milder lime juice. The classic Mexican variation is even more finely chopped, often atop a tostada.

Just about any kind of seafood works for ceviche, but shellfish is served cooked, while finfish is generally raw. The fish marinates for several hours in lime, which denatures the protein and gives it a seared appearance.

Desperate for a local fix, I consulted globetrotting foodie Julio Ramirez, former owner of Fishwife and Turtle Bay Taqueria. My best chance, he advised, is a ceviche special starring fish so fresh it’s nearly twitching. If it’s on the menu permanently, he said, stay away.

“I don’t trust ceviche unless I make it myself,” he warned. “I don’t want to scare you, but the seafood industry is not regulated like the meat industry. By the time you receive the fish to the restaurant, that fish could have been two or three days in the boat. If ceviche is on the menu, then you have to pre-make it.”

Mike Jones of A Moveable Feast agrees. He’ll only use fresh, sustainable seafood for a recipe extracted from “downtown Guadalajara grannies,” in which the fish or shrimp is cured in a lime-lemon-orange juice and spiced with chili, onion, cilantro, black Cypress salt and toasted cumin. Several other local restaurants, including Zocalo in Pacific Grove and Stokes in Monterey, offer ceviche only when they have suitably awesome fish.

But alas, none of the specials surfaced before my deadline. So, foolishly, I ignored the masters and embarked on a mission to find the best local on-menu ceviche. An unscientific Internet search and several dozen phone calls yielded six contenders.

Hola! in Carmel serves a shrimp ceviche appetizer in a cocktail glass with a flower-cut radish garnish. The presentation is classy, but the bland frozen shrimp wilts. Slivers of tomato, cucumber and onion in a weak and salty lime juice create what my lunch date called a “glorified salsa” – we scooped it up with tortilla chips – rather than a stand-alone dish.

Salinas’ Olé Tacqueria offers a similar shrimp ceviche, sans the cocktail glass, atop a tostada. The dish is likewise far too salty, but the tarter marinade earns it a slightly higher ranking.

A worker at Las Comadres, also in Salinas, said by phone that they had ceviche – but upon arrival, I didn’t see it on the menu. The eager-to-please waitress asked the chef to whip some up, and the kind chef, unfortunately, agreed. Ceviche must be marinated in lime juice for at least a few hours, so when a fish-topped tostada arrived minutes later, I couldn’t expect much of it. The compensatory squeeze of lime didn’t mask the fact that the tilapia had been cooked. The result was tasteless.

Seaside’s Mariscos Puerto Nuevo did much better, serving up a tilapia ceviche imbued with the flavor of an overnight citrus-and-spice marinade. Served on a tostada with tomatoes and onions, the fish was tart and fresh, but a little tough.

Just down the street, Seaside’s popular Sarita’s finally delivered. The fish ceviche was perfectly sour, served chilled on a tostada with an avocado garnish and crisp chunks of cucumber, onion and tomato. The cubed tilapia was white on the outside, pink on the inside, and tender throughout.

Final stop was Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing, where I’d been told I’d find several kinds of succulent ceviche to go. But when I arrived on a Wednesday, no hubo ceviche. The friendly bartender told me it’s made fresh on Thursdays and sells out quick.

All the local ceviches I tried approximate the Mexican, finely chopped variety, featuring shrimp or tilapia – rather than the chunky, fishily diverse Peruvian style I’d been craving. So I reverted to Ramirez’s early advice, bought a pound of fresh Monterey Bay cod from Phil’s, and made my own.

Here’s how the contenders stacked up. To share your rockin’ ceviche recommendation, e-mail edible@mcweekly.com.

1. Sarita’s ceviche tostada (tilapia or shrimp, $5.60) • 1936 Fremont Ave., Seaside, 384-4407.

2. Mariscos Puerto Nuevo ceviche tostada (tilapia or shrimp, $4.95) • 580 Broadway Ave., Seaside, 583-0411.

3. Olé Taqueria and Grill ceviche tostada (shrimp, $3.99) • 1927 Natividad Road, Salinas, 443-9500.

4. Hola! Mexican Restaurant and Cantina ceviche (shrimp, $7.95) • 3600 The Barnyard, Carmel, 626-1814.

5. Las Comadres ceviche tostada w/beans and rice (by request, $9.99) • 129 Main St., Salinas, 422-5500.

Unranked: Phil’s Fish Market ceviche to go (cod, shrimp or squid, made Thursdays, $10.99/lb) • 7600 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, 633-2152.