Planning a trip to Lima, Peru

[chefmd]

Quick mid day snack of lucuma and coco ice cream.

 

My kind of museum

 

 

[chefmd]

Lunch at Chez Wong where you get arguably the freshest sole ceviche and stir fry.  No arguing that sole was super fresh, he was cutting it right in front of us.  Ceviche was delicious.  Stir fry was a little greasy.  The price was too high IMHO, about 80 dollars for two people with three beers.  The restaurant was on Bourdain show.

 

 

[chefmd]

One more photo: the chef and I (and the largest sole I have ever seen).

[chefmd]

All this traveling and gourmet eating marathon made me crave few simple dishes.  Salad with baby lettuces and an olive oil and lemon juice dressing.  Mashed potatoes.  Flash seared fish fillet.  Parmesan cheese with a glass of wine.  Those thoughts make it easier to go home where I cook excessively and dream of the next gourmet getaway (but not too soon).

[JoNorvelleWalker]

45 minutes ago, chefmd said:

All this traveling and gourmet eating marathon made me crave few simple dishes.  Salad with baby lettuces and an olive oil and lemon juice dressing.  Mashed potatoes.  Flash seared fish fillet.  Parmesan cheese with a glass of wine.  Those thoughts make it easier to go home where I cook excessively and dream of the next gourmet getaway (but not too soon).

 

Mashed potatoes* are on the menu here tonight -- I'll be thinking of you as I enjoy them!  Thanks so much for sharing your adventure.

 

Meanwhile my spice mill arrives tomorrow!  (Hope I like Aji Panca.)

 

 

*singular

 

[chefmd]

On November 24, 2016 at 6:49 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Mashed potatoes* are on the menu here tonight -- I'll be thinking of you as I enjoy them!  Thanks so much for sharing your adventure.

 

Meanwhile my spice mill arrives tomorrow!  (Hope I like Aji Panca.)

 

 

*singular

 

How was my mashed potato?

[chefmd]

A bottle of Peruvian Savignin Blanc that we had the night before we left.  I have very pedestrian taste for wine, never met Sav Blanc that I did not like.

 

Coming back home yesterday.  Welcome drink on the first flight.

 

Welcome drink on the second flight.

 

Connecting in San Salvador.  There were 19 passengers bringing roasted chicken home, apparently it is the thing to do.

[chefmd]

Back in Lima!  Loved it so much the last time, had to come again.  

Staying in Double tree the first night and moving to the ocean front condo tomorrow. 

Lunch at ik restaurant, it was near the hotel.

Pisco drinks because Peru.  Pisco sour for me and Chilcano for my husband.

 

Tiny quinoa cracker with quinoa and goat cheese bite.

 

 

I wanted to try alpaca the last time I was in Lima but did not have a chance.  Luckily, ik had it on the menu.  Alpaca tartar.

 

I love octopus and this dish was excellent.

 

Mushrooms and quinoa.

 

Two ceviches, scallop and paiche.

 

We wanted cabretto for main course but it was not available.  Settled for duck.

Excellent first meal on this trip!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

30 minutes ago, chefmd said:

We wanted cabretto for main course but it was not available.

 

Lovely food pics from your trip!

 

What is cabretto? Google was not much help. Is it Peruvian for the Spanish cabrito (young goat or kid)?

 

"Settling" for duck doesn't sound like much of a hardship.  I hope you find cabretto (whatever it is) during your Peru trip.

[chefmd]

6 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

Lovely food pics from your trip!

 

What is cabretto? Google was not much help. Is it Peruvian for the Spanish cabrito (young goat or kid)?

 

"Settling" for duck doesn't sound like much of a hardship.  I hope you find cabretto (whatever it is) during your Peru trip.

It is cabrito!  And I hope to find it!  Or as the menu above says: goat well accompanied 

[chefmd]

A whole frozen suckling pig in a grocery store.  The white spot is a reflection of the overhead light.  

 

[chefmd]

Lunch yesterday was at Rafael.  We had a amazing waiter who is actually a chef from Portugal travelling from country to country working FOH and BOH planning to go back to Portugal next year to open his own restaurant.  All the dishes that he recommended were excellent.  I ordered tuna and foie gras dish a la La Bernadin on my own and it was hugely disappointing.  Few pale slices of tune with few cubes of foie, drizzled with truffle oil.  Should have listened to the guy...

 

Tuna tiradito.

 

Sole and scallop ceviche with sea urchin leche de tigre.

 

Disappointing tuna and foie gras inspired by La Bernadin

 

Super delicious octopus.  

 

Sauteed foie gras.  Very generous portion.

 

Sweet breads

 

French toast with cereal ice cream for dessert.  I suspect that ice cream was inspired by Milk Bar (Momofuku) but it was not credited on the menu.

 

 

[chefmd]

And of course I had to make a rookie mistake of drinking chicha morada while walking around the shopping mall.  As I was finishing suspiciously warm drink, I saw where it came from: a large container sitting at room temperature.  Oh well, there are a lot of bathrooms in the condo that we are renting.

[chefmd]

Watching sunset last night while sipping chilcano on our balcony.

 

 

 

[chefmd]

This morning I needed something to soothe my stomach after chicha morado disaster last night.  Grandma always said that rice is good for it.  So we had aroz chaufo at the market.  So far so good...

 

[chefmd]

I am not hard core as @rarerollingobject.  My eyes are definitely much bigger than my stomach.  Only able to eat one decent size meal a day while travelling.  Today we went to LaMar for a late lunch.

 

Potato, sweet potato, plantain chips with a few dipping sauces and a local beer.  Small dish of crunchy corn.

 

Mixed ceviche with some white fish, octopus, shrimp, scallops, huge corn kernels, sweet potatoes.

 

Sushi roll topped with spicy tuna.  Mango inside the roll.

 

Dear husband managed to order the only non fish dish on the menu: chicken causa.

 

 

 

[chefmd]

Yesterday we had lunch at Maido.  You can order Nikkei experience which is a japanese/peruvian tasting menu  (may be we will do it on Tue if I am not dined out on fancy food by then) but we chose to order from the menu.

 

Tuna tartar on quinoa cracker.  I wish Trader Joe's had crackers like that.

 

Two different seviche.  One in the rock dish is topped with fresh hearts of palm.  Yum.

 

I had sushi course.  Dear husband does not like sushi.  When sushi arrived, he volunteered to share it with me which almost caused a scene.  I did let him have one salmon, one scallop, and one eel/foie gras pieses.  Fat tuna was not to be shared with anyone.  Oh, and the waiter tried to shame me for asking for soy sauce.  I was so angry about sharing sushi at that point that one look at my facial expression sent him running to bring me a cute little soy sauce dispenser.

 

Little goat dumplings and cui what I called "meat balls".  Tasty and exotic.

 

The best non sushi dish of the day: uni rice.  It was creamy, tasted like the sea.  The best seafood risotto I ever had!

 

"Seviche" dessert.  I am not a huge dessert fan and this one was only OK.  Tasted like a slightly sweet yogurt.

 

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

OK, I'm back on board with this subject. We will leave for Lima on the 17th. Most of our time will be spent away from Lima--just there at the beginning and the end--but we will definitely be eating at least one important meal before we return to CDMX on the 29th. The rest of the time we'll be in the Sacred Valley, Cusco, Puno and Machu Picchu. What could be bad?

 

I don't expect we'll have extraordinary dining in Aguas Calientes, the town near Machu Picchu, but I assume we'll find edible and occasionally good food whenever we find it. We're looking forward to having an introductory visit to Perú with the idea that we'll come back later to further explore the places we liked. We did that with our first trip to Ecuador--the Galápagos, the mainland--and then returned for a month-long visit a couple of years later. I thought we'd never leave Vilacabamba--way too comfortable. But our flight was in Quito and we had to drag ourselves away from the sleepy little place. By the way, there was a B&B run by a Frenchman that was one of the most pleasant places we've ever stayed. Good breakfast, and at the time only $11 per person.

 

But now we're on to Perú. Turns out we prefer north-to-south trips--no jet lag. And we speak enough Spanish to be able to communicate, which is more than I can about French.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro