Dine Like a King

FOR MOST PEOPLE, Peru conjures images of Machu Picchu, the Inca Trail and friendly looking alpacas. However, Peru should also be celebrated for its food. A product of many cultures, Peruvian food is influenced by Indigenous traditions, its rich history (pre- and post-Spanish colonization) and its diverse, natural pantry. This culinary mecca is a melting pot of flavours from Asia, Africa and Europe. Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian) to Amazonian, and Nikkei (Japanese- Peruvian) to Afro-Peruvian, these cuisines are found everywhere in Peru, from casual market-side vendors to some of the world’s best restaurants.

People like Virgilio Martínez, who is behind Central (currently ranked sixth on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list), are from a new generation of Peruvian chefs. They’re elevating traditional foods in what’s called Novoandina cuisine – a combination of traditional, local ingredients and modern techniques. I sampled these creations and new-to-me ingredients like mashwa (tuber), piranha and cuy – yes, that means guinea pig – on my recent trek to the gastronomic hub. Here’s how I spent four days eating my way through the City of Kings.

Day 1: To market, to market To get my bearings in vibrant and eclectic Lima, I joined Haku Tours’ food-and-arts tour. Our guide took us on a stroll along Agua Dulce beach towards Chorrillos Fish Market. Under the gaze of Lima’s controversial Cristo del Pacífico, we, and a flock of Inca terns, eye the fish stalls where I’m surprised to learn that Peruvians eat more chicken than fish. At Mercado La Paradita, our guide navigates us through the variety of produce harvested from Peru’s 28 climates. We sample starchy lucuma, cherimoya with its fruity bubble gum flavour, plus seed-flecked tuna fruit (prickly pear), learning that greenskinned varieties have a sweet orange flesh.

But it’s the down-your-arm juicy pepino dulce (cucumber melon) that stops me in my tracks with its honeydew likeness.

For quintessentially Peruvian dishes we head south to Surco Market Number 2. I love the slimy, viscosity of the traditional emoliente (herbal, roasted grain tea) that’s thickened with chia seeds, freshly scraped aloe flesh and cooked barley. At Chanfainita Pale, we greedily lap up the chanfainita, an iconic Afro-Peruvian stew that’s chock-full of beef lung, potatoes and hominy, breaking only for gulps of chicha morada, a Peruvian purple corn punch, spiked with cinnamon. There’s ceviche, and then there’s the ceviche at La Picanteria. Made from fish that’s been ‘cooked’ in a citrus juice marinade with ají pepper and other seasonings, we pick our fresh catch from beds of crushed ice flanking the kitchen. Curious why most cevicherias are closed by late afternoon, we learn that Peruvians enjoy fish earlier in the day when it’s thought to be freshest.

With the guidance of our friendly waitress, our family-style meal kicks off with a dreamy and complimentary aguadito de pescado, a flavourful seafood stew made with a fortuno (amberjack) head. Priced by its weight, the chita (gilt-head bream) we select is prepared two ways: first, as a lush ceviche that’s served with addictive, fish-skin chicharrones, then grilled and dressed in a mouthwatering ají amarillo sauce with fried yuca. We’re surprised by a final course that uses the fish’s bones in rocoto en chupe, a chowder-like soup that contains chicken and the secret ingredient, ceviche juice.

Day 2: Cuisines that cross cultures In working-class Santa Catalina, ceviche master Javier Wong fillets a whole sole to the delight of diners at Chez Wong. Known for having no menu, the lunch-only Anthony Bourdain-lauded huarique (a family-run restaurant) serves hot or cold dishes using only the flat fish. It’s pricey, but revellers eating in the living room-turned-diningroom (you’re in his house) have open views of the chef and his flame-licked wok at work. Wong’s ceviche is traditional with chunks of sole and octopus in a leche de tigre (or ‘tiger’s milk,’ the name for ceviche marinade) with plenty of lime juice. His stir-fry is a taste of Chifa, and although it exudes skill – vegetables are tender-crisp, sweet and sour sauces are well balanced – it is reminiscent of Americanized Chinese food.

For a taste of Amazonian cuisine, I make my way to Las Brisas del Ucayali. Here, I had cocona for the first time in a dip with fiery aji charapita. It’s a hot awakening before the super starchy tacacho, made from cooked plantains that are mashed with lard. It’s served with juane, a mixture of rice, chicken, olives and egg that’s wrapped in swampgrown bijao leaves and boiled. The latter feels comforting and strangely familiar, until we realize the tamale-like dish is similar to zongzi, glutinous rice packages often found in Chinese cuisine.

Next, we head to Pedro Schiaffino’s ÁmaZ for contemporary Amazonian food and devour every moist morsel of the patarashca, a divine dish where bijao leaf-wrapped freshwater fish is cooked over hot coals with a mild chili sauce. Meanwhile, classics like the hen juane and hen inchicapi, a yucathickened stew, seem conservative when consumed after insanely delicious churos pishpirones – a starter of giant Amazonian snail shells filled with conch-like flesh, rich spiced sauce and glistening tapioca pearls. Nikkei cuisine is perhaps Peru’s most internationally recognized and Mitsuharu Tsumura of Maido leads the charge. His Experiencia menu showcases everything from pristine sushi, including aburi scallop topped with lightly blistered uni cream, and tender 50-hour ribs to a refined thimble of cuy (guinea pig). In Cusco, they serve the latter in its most rustic state: whole roasted. It’s lean like rabbit but with a lot of bones.

Day 3: The culinary cult of Martínez While in Peru, any food-forward traveller would be remiss to skip out on a visit to one of Virgilio Martínez’s restaurants. Modernized Andean cuisine isn’t new, but Martínez has been the most successful at it. Through 16-plus inventive courses, Central’s tasting experience showcases the country’s biodiversity over every altitude. When the concept launched in 2013, it propelled Central onto the World’s 50 Best list; two years later, the restaurant ranked number four on the survey and has held a spot on the esteemed list ever since.

More interesting still is Martínez’s explanation that his menu isn’t dependent on the preparation itself but on traditions and the stories behind rescued Indigenous ingredients. The Andean tradition of roasting potatoes in a huatia oven, for example, is honoured as a tabletop version with a crust of clay and salt from the Maras salt mines which date back to pre-Incan times. “What we do is related to our culture, how we’re related to nature, our farms and the ways we produce food,” Martínez explains.

Central transforms shredded yellow mashwa from high-altitude farmlands into marvelous crisp tubes. Paiche, an Amazonian freshwater fish, is succulent. But I fall for the abalone-rich flavour of the scallops from Peru’s marine valley that are served in a frothy macre (pumpkin) soup. Shining alongside the cacophony of new flavours is the restaurant’s elegant juice and South American alcohol pairing, including a Chilean skin-contact wine made using grapes from 200-year-old vines.

Continuing our tour of Martínez’s restaurants, we receive the warmest of welcomes at the slightly more casual Kjolle, followed by a parade of thoughtfully composed courses. Chef Pía León, who cooked at Central for a decade, creates dishes that are less high and rigid than the flagship and more seasonally inspired. She mixes and matches ingredients sourced from many ecosystems. Everything on the menu sounds fantastic, so we order it all. The meal is stellar.

Dinner launches with an earthy loaf of maca (Peruvian ginseng) bread, whipped butter and an akee-like cocona spread. From our table we see León and her crew behind the kitchen counter; at its other end there are bowls filled with raw produce that are introduced with each course. A split pod of pacae (ice-cream bean tree) is featured on one. When the curious-looking smoked and frozen cottony flesh is served on sliced scallops bathed in leche de tigre, the sommelier encourages us to try the fruit in its native state. We’re glad we did – it’s like a mild, dry, non-tropical mangosteen.

Tartare made from cured duck is fantastic, especially alongside squid ink-stained kañiwa (a relative of quinoa) bread, with tender curls of lightly poached squid and fried squash strips. We go wild for the squash and crustacean dish, where a chip dusted with salsa-like tomato and seaweed powder hides river prawns and orzo that’ve been folded into mashed loche (squash).

Day 4: More Martínez in Maras Completing my circuit of Virgilio Martínez’s eateries, I find myself 1,000 kilometres from Lima in Maras, near Cusco. I’m here to visit Mil, an ambitious restaurant-meets-foodlab. Every course I dig into from Mil’s tasting menu is a bite of an ecosystem within the Peruvian Andes. It’s focused on ingredients grown at high altitude, many of which my server pointed out moments earlier on a

tour of the property. My taste buds flirt with a fava bean-filled oca (tuber) pancake that’s slathered with soft caramel-like elderberry butter. There’s chuño (naturally freeze-dried potatoes) served as candy-sweet translucent chips, protein-rich tarwi (a bean grown in the Andes) that trumps slow-cooked pork belly and corn presented in every form and colour in the four-part Diversity of Corn dish. This is locality and terroir at another level.

Once my second course, a teetering pile of lamb tartare (sweetened with nectar from the cabuya plant) arrives, every eye in the room is on me. The load is precariously heaped under a quivering blanket of dressed mesclun salad greens and delicate elderflowers, and on top of a fragile quinoa-speckled kañiwa cracker. Despite the stares from the other diners, I’m doing a happy dance in my seat.

Between bites, I can’t help but admire the incredible view from my table. Here, in a region known as the Sacred Valley, I’m sandwiched between Cusco and Machu Picchu. Views of snow-dusted mountains, fertile plateaus and river-rippled valleys are broken up by the impressive Maras salt mines and ancient Incan ruins like Moray. These pre-Colombian circular terraces are believed to have been used as an agricultural research lab by the Incans.

I conclude my stay in Maras with a visit to Mater Iniciativa – a research initiative run by Martínez’s sister Malena. Here, they identify, catalogue and study the way wild ingredients from the Andes, Amazon and the sea can be incorporated into new dishes. In the centre, I see a table laden with Andean ingredients – colours and flavours I’m gleefully associating with the incredible dishes I’ve encountered. Then I spot a selection of Peru’s 4,000 potato varieties in every knob and shade possible. It’s a reality check. I might know more about Peruvian food but I still don’t know much.