Travel bucket list idea:
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
|If there’s one reason to stop over in Lima it’s the food. The city has some of the finest restaurants in the world – with chefs like Virgilio Martínez, Jaime Pesaque and Gastón Acurio ranked in the World’s ‘Fifty Best’ on the exclusive San Pellegrino list.
What makes Lima chefs so exciting is their virtuoso fusion of unique national ingredients with Asian and European techniques. Star chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino has a plate on his degustation comprising only potatoes arranged to look like beach pebbles – all from different Andean locations with astonishing, divergent flavours.
Peruvian-Japanese Micha Tsumura serves fiery tiger milk tuna tiraditos alongside river-fish sushi, and 50-hour-cooked Amazonian beef.
You could spend a week in the gastro-hub suburbs of San Isidro, Miraflores and Barranco and get a mere taste of the exciting scene. But be sure to dine in Astrid y Gaston – the pioneer of Lima gastronomy and Central, by Michelin-starred Virgilio Martínez.
For a sense of the huge variety of ingredients Lima’s top chefs draw on visit Mercado No1 de Surquillo – packed with exotic fruit, vegetables and medicinal plants. It’s also a good spot to sample simple ceviche, but don’t focus on the street food – Lima’s all about fine dining.
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Lima’s pioneer gourmet restaurant, founded by cordon bleu-trained, multi-award-winning team Gaston and Astrid Acúrio who invented Novoandina cuisine in the 1990s.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
The flagship restaurant of one of Lima’s most famous chefs, Michelin-starred Virgilio Martínez who has restaurants all over the world.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Pía León honed her skills at Astrid y Gastón and Central. Her food focuses on the breadth of Peru’s ingredients – with a degustation for vegetarians and another with sea bass and razor clams, Peruvian tubers including yucca, olluco and potato, quinoa-like kañiwa and duck, and duck cured with squid ink.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Astonishing Peruvian Japanese fusion or Nikkei cooking from Micha Tsumura. Three-times winner of the best restaurant in Latin America.
Adult price: £70
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Probably the best hotel restaurant in Peru, helmed by Cordon Bleu and triple Michelin-star El Celler de Can Roca-trained Rafael Piquera who is famous for his seafood and causa salads.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Famous for its ceviches and with a legendary Pisco Sour cocktail bar and run by rising star Jaime Pesaque, who has an empire of restaurants around the world.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima, Lima Region, Peru
Renzo Garibaldi’s award-winning butcher’s deli come restaurant is for carnivore’s only – with a meaty restaurant and a much-celebrated degustation menu served for 12 at one table.
Adult price: £50
Best for ages 18+
Lima’s gastronomic scene is vibrant – with new openings every month. Book tables before you arrive in the long-established favourites like Astrid y Gastón, Central, Tsumura’s Maido and Pedro Miguel Schiaffino’s Amaz. All are in the southern suburbs between San Isidro, Barranco and Miraflores where the scene is hottest. Book a hotel there and ask the concierge for the latest. The excellent Westin hosts Rafael Piqueras’s seafood restaurant Maras.
There are street food tours in Lima – offered in many cheaper hotels and hostels. It’s worth visiting Mercado No1 de Surquillo to see the exotic ingredients, sample a streetside- ceviche or lunch on a Butifarra pulled-pork sandwich. But don’t focus on the street food when you can eat at one of the best restaurants in the world for the price of a mediocre meal back home. Lima is all about world-class, contemporary cooking.
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Destination guides including or relevant to this experience
Lima Region, Peru
Peru’s capital, while not the most appealing of cities, does offer stately colonial architecture, fascinating museums of Peru’s empirical; history and world-class dining.
Peru
A land of spectacular deserts, high mountains and rainforests that teem with wildlife, Peru is also home to an array of dramatically situated pre-Colombian ruins, including Machu Picchu.
