Food and Drink

Why Lima?

By Charlene Rooke

Just a few years ago, foodies were scratching their heads when Lima started popping up on Gourmet and Food & Wine lists of the globe’s hottest culinary cities. Now, Peruvian food is expected to be the Next Big Thing hitting the North American restaurant scene. Here’s why – and where to taste it.

The Geography: Location, Location, Location

1.) The Amazon, which makes up more than half the area of Peru, has the highest biodiversity on the planet. 2.) The Humboldt Current, the cold-weather cousin of El Niño, brings algae-rich water to the coast, providing for a bounteous seafood harvest. 3.) The Andes create a variety of microclimates for everything from pisco grapes to hundreds of varieties of potatoes. These geographic gifts have made Peru – where potatoes, tomatoes and corn were first cultivated – the world’s larder. It’s even the original source of dishes now claimed by other regions, like ceviche (take that, Mexico and Caribbean). Where to try it: Malabar specializes in unique ingredients from the Andes and the Amazon, including deliciously salty, bubble-like Andean river algae and the meaty Amazon paiche fish. The father of chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino was a cocktail scholar, making this the best place in town to try an authentic pisco punch. Since Peruvian seafood is best served relatively unadorned, head to one of the city’s hundreds of cebichería (ceviche restaurants). We like Restaurante Caplina, where chef Fernando Pacheco Sandoval does a classic five-ingredient ceviche (lime, peppers, cilantro, onion, salt) with ojo de uva flatfish and a great tacu tacu (a crispy rice pancake, reminiscent of paella).

The Culture: Melting Wok
Peru’s foodies roll their eyes at the idea that Asia and Western Europe are home to the world’s “mother” cuisines. And given South America’s rich food traditions, they’ve certainly got a point. But if Spain and Japan are parents, Lima is a prodigal child. With its Spanish colonial history, expat communities from all over the globe (including the second-largest expat Japanese population in the world) and indigenous influences both old and new, Lima defines fusion. Its unique Latin-Asian cuisine, called chifa (Chinese-influenced) and nikei (Japanese-influenced), is a model of modern intercultural cooking. One of the most popular Peruvian dishes is lomo saltado, which turns out to be a basic beef stir-fry with rice, sided with a satisfying stack of Peruvian fries. Where to try it: Wa Lok, in Lima’s historic Chinatown, is several steps above hole-in-the-wall chifas, with dishes like “chicharróns” of fish and squid – crispy seafood that plays on the Peruvian passion for frizzles of fried pork skin. We found the ultimate lomo saltado at the restaurant in the private pre-Columbian gallery Museo Larco. (Don’t miss the Incan erotic art!)

The Age: Youth Meets Experience
Lima is a very young city at the moment, with an average age of just 25.5 among its population of nearly 10 million. This means it has a vibrant late-night dining and nightlife scene (dinner before nine is deeply unfashionable) in areas like Barranco and Miraflores. It also means that a generation of young chefs – many of them sons and daughters of some privilege – are opening new, daring rooms after training abroad. Case in point: 42-year-old celebrity chef Gastón Acurio, hailed as a rock star by everyone from grandmothers to teens, has defined nuevo criollo (new Peruvian coastal cuisine) in the last few years. The Paris Cordon Bleu-trained son of a former Peruvian prime minister, he has a handful of Lima restaurants, with outposts across South America, and now a branch of his seafood palace La Mar in San Francisco. Where to try it: Sample the nightlife at the louche mansion Ayahuasca or at Picas in Barranco. The first, and still the hippest, nuevo fine-dining experience is Acurio’s Astrid y Gastón, co-named for his pastry-chef wife.

Useful information
Wa Lok, Jr. Paruro 864, Centro, Lima, 51-1-427-2656 (also a Miraflores location)
Picas, Bajada de Baños 340, Barranco, Lima, 51-1-373-0002, picas.com.pe

(Charlene Rooke, editor-in-chief of Western Living magazine, is a Vancouver-based travel writer and voracious foodie.)

FOOD: Malabar Restaurant
BAR: CafÉ del Museo
LOUNGE: Picas