Travel Food Porn: Peru (Part 1 of 3)

Part of the delay in me finally writing about the food in Peru is that I ate so damn much of it. I think I was still going through some sort of potato-less shock when I got back to the States and couldn't quite comprehend the thought of revisiting all the starchy wonderfulness that I encountered during the second half of my trip. So I'm exercising some portion control and writing this in three parts.

I was only in Lima for three nights, but I was advised by many that I would fall in love with the food scene in this city. That the main reason to visit Lima was to eat. Having now been there, I would agree with this sentiment.

The first part of my Lima write-up will cover my favorite two meals in the city, in addition to the chocolate making class I took. These three experiences are quite disparate from each other, but all stories worth telling.

Let's start with the cheapest meal I had in Lima and how something so wonderfully simple can be so good. On my way to my chocolate-making class, after a failed attempt at doing tandem paragliding off the coastline shown above, I realized that I wanted to have a good meal prior to consuming a lot of chocolate. Because it's vacation. And that's how I roll.

I was actually quite hungry considering I hadn't eaten that morning for fear of losing it while jumping off a cliff. So since that was not in the cards, I settled for a heavy lunch. I found a little hole in the wall on my way to the class and ordered the papas with huancaina sauce for my appetizer followed by the Peruvian classic, lomo saltado, shown at the right.

My 8-year-old self, who would have survived on potatoes and starches alone if I was allowed, was thrilled beyond belief that people eat like this on the regular. A starch appetizer, followed by meat paired with potatoes and rice. This is the Peruvian take on stir fry and something I will definitely try to replicate this winter. It seems pretty easy and it will allow me to improve on my steak cooking abilities (something that I don't always excel at.) I blame the lack of a good grill.

Following this heavy lunch, I continued on to my chocolate making class at the Museo de Choco. I received this recommendation from a friend who had taken the same class during his recent trip to Peru. Knowing that I like to do these types of activities when traveling, I appreciated the recommendation.

While it was interesting to learn more about the chocolate making process, I didn't feel this was as hands-on as I typically seek out in a cooking class. We did ground some cocoa beans and make hot chocolate, but the true chocolate making was more of an observational process of the big machines doing their thing to mix all the ingredients. Then we were provided with chocolate that was ready to be placed in molds. Don't get me wrong, it was good chocolate, but perhaps I should have taken something a bit more hands-on.

Now on to my other favorite meal in Lima. I read about Rafael in my Lonely Planet Guide and had heard great things about this little spot that if you blinked, you'd miss, on a quiet side street in Miraflores. I had tried to get reservations at some of the other hotspots (including Central, which I'll cover in Part 2 of this blog series) but had limited success.

I was able to get a cozy spot for one in this restaurant, which boasted a well stocked bar and great ambiance. This great "mood lighting" made it a bit hard to take proper pictures of the meal, but I did copy down the descriptions. I opted to have two of their appetizers and a dessert, so that I could try as much food as my little stomach could handle that day.

A fellow foodie that I met during a city tour earlier that day had recommended that I get the tuna tataki as one of my dishes. The dish, shown above, was a yellow fin tuna tataki with yuzu, kiuri, avocado, and salmon caviar. The fish was so fresh and the flavors just melded together in your mouth. I chose to eat this as slowly as possible, thinking that my next dish would pale in comparison. Wrong. It was just as good. Seafood really is wonderful in Lima. My second dish was a shrimp tempura with akishiso sauce, cucumber, mango, avocado and cashew nut salad. Unfortunately the lighting wasn't on my side to capture how pretty the dish was, but trust me, it was just as good as the tataki.

I closed my meal with the crispy churros with smoky Nutella sauce, decadent truffle-Nutella tart, and raspberry sorbet, shown at the right. Let's just say I am not a dessert person but I was in heaven with just about every dessert I had in South America. None were overly sweet, but complex in their own way. A wonderful way to end a great meal.

If you find yourself in Lima, I highly recommend checking out Rafael. It's a great date spot, or a place for one single foodie to eat her little heart out.