The London Foodie Goes to Peru - Lima (Part 1) - Barranco and San Isidro Districts

A sprawling place, founded in 1535 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, Lima is a curious mix of a sleek modern city with large shantytowns, and a smattering of colonial architecture thrown in. The most fashionable and upmarket districts in Lima are Barranco, Miraflores and San Isidro. They are also the most policed areas of the capital, and visitors can therefore walk unhindered.

Sprawling Lima, Peru

The heart of a bohemian revival neighbourhood, Barranco is now home to many of Peru’s best-known artists, musicians, designers and photographers. It first emerged in the 19th-century as a fashionable seaside retreat for the Limeño aristocracy. They summered here amidst the salty air and a drier, warmer microclimate, as the high cliffs of Chorrillos shield Barranco from Lima’s cold and humid southern winds.

Wealthy families built grand Belle Époque houses around the area’s landscaped parks and along elegant avenues. When 20th century urban expansion encroached upon this elite enclave, those wealthy Limeñans moved out and squatters took up residence in the abandoned, decaying mansions.

Sunset in Barranco, Lima

Barranco’s fortunes shifted again in the 21st century thanks to a migration of Lima’s arts community, including fashion photographer Mario Testino and the Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa. Fresh coats of paint on many of the area’s most charming colonial houses signal this vibrant revival, and today it is a very good place to spend a few days in Lima.

Where to Stay

Hotel B

Built in the Belle Époque style in 1914, the original mansion which now houses Hotel B was designed by the French architect Claude Sahut, who also remodelled many of Lima's public buildings and parks.

The house was owned by the wealthy Garcia Bedoya family, and was luxuriously furnished with imported Italian marble and tiles, very high ceilings and open balconies in the bedrooms.

After decades of neglect, the building's restoration successfully preserved the original structure while introducing a three-storey annex. Today, it is a gorgeous looking boutique hotel in the heart of Barranco.

The public rooms of the hotel are strikingly beautiful, with 'La Sala' serving as a reception and gathering area. The space faces the main street and features two large sitting areas and also a bar.

Adjacent to the lobby, La Biblioteca is a quiet room on the main floor, with doors opening onto the hotel’s enclosed central patio, and abundant greenery.

On the first floor, there is a lounge reserved for hotel guests, in an open, airy setting, with international newspapers, magazines, along with light snacks, coffee and tea.

On the rooftop, there is a private outdoor lounge overlooking Barranco and the Pacific Ocean, with a full bar and a light menu, available during the summer months.

Our room was elegantly laid out with many original features, including shuttered doors, and a comfortable king-sized bed. There was a private balcony overlooking the tree-lined street below. Despite its venerable appearance, it had all the modern conveniences one might wish for.

Breakfast is taken in an open-air central patio, which separates the old house from the contemporary annex, and is surrounded with jasmine and fig trees.

There was a stunningly presented buffet of fresh fruit, cheeses and salami, as well as tasty little cakes set out on elaborate silverware and crockery, and hot dishes made to order in the patio.

Hotel B is a haven of elegance and tranquility in Peru’s hectic capital city. It evokes the beauty and glamour of a bygone age, and I cannot think of a more fitting place to stay when in Lima.

Where to Eat

Lima is by far the best place to try Peruvian cuisine in the country. As the capital city, the shear concentration of excellent restaurants mean that in addition to fierce competition, the best Peruvian chefs are to be found there. The high demand pushes the quality standards higher than elsewhere in the country. We didn’t have a bad meal in Lima, but found that standards were patchy in other towns.

This makes Lima the ideal place to savour the huge variety of ingredients Peru has to offer from its coastal, Andean mountain and Amazon regions. Furthermore, the cold Humboldt current from the Antarctic at Lima’s Pacific coast makes the sea very rich. Fish and seafood restaurants are therefore a must when visiting the city, and as affordable as any other.

Virgilio Martinez’ restaurant Central is one of the top dining destinations in Lima, and I have written a feature on the epic 17 courses we enjoyed there, which will be posted separately.

Maras at The Westin Hotel, San Isidro

Perhaps one of the best meals we had during our entire trip in Peru, Chef Rafael Piqueras’ cooking was faultless, blending Peru’s finest produce in a creative and highly sophisticated menu. Chef Piqueras worked in Italy and Spain for a number of years, but returned to Lima to head the kitchen at Maras in The Westin Hotel, in the upmarket district of San Isidro.

Maras Restaurant at the Westin Hotel

Maras is a town in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco, from where the country’s finest salt is produced. His 10-course tasting menu (US $65, £40), started with three small ‘abre bocas’ or amuse bouche. Firstly, crispy dehydrated pork skin topped with foie gras, shaved chocolate and Maras salt. This was followed by a thin sliver of house cured tuna topped with ‘tears’ (tiny lobules) of mandarin. The most exciting amuse bouche in my opinion was the gazpacho bonbon – this was a little sphere of cocoa butter filled with tomato gazpacho that burst in the mouth releasing thrillingly intense flavours.

The starters began with a salad of quinoa, tomatoes, with a refreshing artichoke ice cream, topped with chilli and peanuts and served with three sauces, made from rocoto peppers, huacatay, peanuts and fresh cream.

Delectable Paracas scallops were next (Paracas is a coastal town south of Lima, renowned for its fish and seafood, reviewed here), served with crunchy tapioca and yellow cocona fruit sauce.

To follow we had Chef Piquera’s Nikkei grilled octopus with miso, orange, lentils and chorizo - accompanied by intense little spots of flavour – the orange from chorizo, the green from ocopa from Arequipa (Ocopa is a sauce made from fresh cheese, aji amarillo and huacatay or black mint among other ingredients), and the black being squid ink.

Then, onto the mains - our first was roasted seabass served with cauliflower purée, a sautéed slice of cauliflower, a complex duck reduction and black truffle ‘pearls’.

The second main was an exquisite dish of veal cheek - braised for 40 hours, the meat was wrapped in ham and bread, baked until crunchy, then served with a beef reduction and mushrooms, along with a risotto of orzo pasta.

For pre-dessert, we had a sandwich of lúcuma ice cream (lúcuma is one of Peru’s most popular fruits from the Amazon, it tastes very much like butterscotch), with meringue, cappuccino foam, chocolate biscuit and praline. Dessert proper was a lovely pumpkin brioche brûlée served with caramelized fig, lemon sorbet and an unusual but totally delicious lemongrass custard.

Chef Rafael Piquera’s Maras Restaurant is a must for anyone visiting Lima – for a 10-course tasting menu at this level of skill and sophistication, £40 is outstanding value. Highly recommended.

Cala

Another fantastic meal was at Cala Restaurant in Barranco. This is an ocean front restaurant with magnificent views of the sea. Cala is a fashionable place, so don’t be put off by the party crowd or the slightly intrusive music – this is a serious restaurant with excellent food.

Our lunch kicked off with a platter of maki sushi– the ‘Cala’ with avocado and cream cheese, and another maki of salmon ‘acevichado’ (£7). Maki acevichado is the Peruvian version of California rolls – an inside out maki-sushi roll, filled with deep fried prawn, cream cheese and avocado, topped with either tuna or salmon thinly sliced, and a drizzle of creamy leche de tigre. Hence the name acevichado, meaning ‘ceviche-style’.

Next came a tiradito of scallop and octopus (£8). Tiradito is Peru’s answer to Japanese sashimi -thin slices of fish are served sashimi-style, but seasoned with a leche de tigre dressing. Here, thin slices of octopus and scallop were beautifully presented on a black glass plater, served with a delicious leche de tigre, Parmesan crisps, tomato, aji rocoto jam and edible flowers.

The Cala ceviche had sole, baby octopus, a jumbo prawn, avocado, choclo corn and crispy calamari (£9.25). This was a great dish, with fish and seafood of outstanding quality and flavour.

We also had a risotto of grouper and king prawns, crustacea and aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow chilli), that was rich and full of flavour (£9.70).

Every dish we ate at Cala was spot-on, and the setting is spectacular. If there is only one seafood restaurant you have time to visit in Lima, make Cala your choice!

Malabar

Opened in 2004, Malabar is the number 20 restaurant in the San Pelligrino list of the 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America in 2015. The five course menu we sampled cost £44 per person. Malabar is considered one of the top restaurants in Lima, and on the evening we were there it was packed.

The amuse bouche was ‘false stones’ – actually a variety of cooked Peruvian potatoes, covered in edible chaco clay from Puno near Lake Titicaca, giving them a grey appearance very similar to stones. This was a clever, tongue-in-cheek kind of dish to start the evening off.

Our first dish was a plate of brazilnut cheese, served with a tomato confit, ginger flowers, and the Andean peperomia herb, all marinated with chestnut oil. The cheese was a tad salty and contrasted nicely with the tomato confit.

Our next dish, ‘3,000 metres above sea level’, was a delicate creation including wild cucumber, cushuro (a high Andean spherical fungus that tastes a little like seaweed), maca emulsion with leche de tigre. This was deliciously savoury, with a crunchy texture and a tangy dressing.

The dish described as ‘Judas’ ear’, had tropical fresh mushrooms from Chachapoas in Amazonas, with peach palm and fresh hearts of palm. With dry lemon, and pijuayo purée (a nut), this dish featured fresh, earthy flavours, and contrasting smooth and crunchy textures.

Escolar (a Peruvian white fish) adobo style had roasted, crispy sweet potato, and marinated onion pearls. The fish was cooked in a pork-based sauce. I really enjoyed this dish, with tender meaty fish, sweet potato that was crunchy on the outside while very tender inside, and a richly flavoured sauce, all enlivened by crispy onion pearls.

Roasted cabrito (kid), baked for 24 hours, was served with smoked corn purée, corn sprouts, slices of baby corn, corn flavours, carob sauce and fennel. This was very good, with delicious and tender kid, a richly concentrated flavoursome sauce, and a medley of types of corn.

For dessert we had lucuma and white chocolate mousse, coffee ‘seeds’, and bitter chocolate leaves.

I enjoyed Malabar - the dishes were sophisticated and brilliantly executed, and the setting elegant. However, the portions were on the small side, and wished there had been a little more of it, or at least more carbs on the menu.

What to Do

Barranco is now a district for art, and there are many private galleries in the area that are worth a visit. With its squares and gardens, and an extensive front on the Pacific coast, it is also a good place for wandering and people watching. 

There are many public and private museums in Lima, but few as pleasing as the Larco Museum.

Housed in a former mansion, itself built on the site of a pre-Columbian temple, the museum offers a varied collection of 3,000 years of ceramic, textile and precious metal artifacts. There are also mummies that show the different ways ancient cultures, including the Incas, preserved their dead.

Visitors are allowed into the museum's store rooms to see what's not on display: a vast array of ceramic objects crafted by ancient Peruvians; there are tens of thousands of pots in the shapes of animals, plants and people.

A 2000 year-old Moche head scupture - George Bush?

Travel Essentails

Hotel B
San Martín 301
Barranco
Lima 
Peru
http://hotelb.pe/barranco

Maras at The Westin Hotel
Las Begonias with Amador Merino Reyna
San Isidro, Lima, Peru
e-mail: restaurantemaras@libertador.com.pe 
Phones 201-5023 / 201-5000
http://www.marasrestaurante.com.pe/

Cala
Cto. De Playas
Barranco
Lima, Peru
http://www.calarestaurante.com.pe

Malabar
Avenida Camino Real 101
San Isidro 15073
Lima, Peru
http://www.malabar.com.pe

Larco Museum
Av. Bolívar 1515
Pueblo Libre
Lima
Peru
www.museolarco.org

Pachamama - Peruvian Inspired Cuisine, Made in England

Name: Pachamama

Where: 18 Thayer  Street, Lonson, W1U 3JY, http://pachamamalondon.com/

Cost: The menu is small but well thought-out, themed around small eats, and grouped into snacks, land, sea and soil. 'Land' dishes (meat and poultry) cost from £7 to £29, 'Sea' (fish and seafood) from £5 to £10. The 'soil' small eats are vegetable-based, with squash, plaintain, asparagus and quinoa featuring prominently, and priced from £7 to £8. All the fish and seafood is sourced from the British coast, and the meat is all from Yorkshire. Piscos and cocktails are priced at £8.50. Entry-level wines start at £23 for a Spanish Macabeo or an Australian Shiraz.

About: Pachamama, meaning 'Mother Earth' in Quechua language, is one of a cluster of Peruvian restaurants to open in London in the last couple of years, situated in Marylebone, just a stone's throw from The Wallace Collection. With a discrete ground floor door that is very easy to miss, the restaurant opens up in the basement to a surprisingly cavernous space, with a 10 -seater bar for cocktails and small eats, and around 70 covers.

Fairly packed on the midweek evening we attended, the restaurant is all distressed wood-panelling, tiled floors, and plain wooden tables. The menu is Peruvian themed, with some Japanese-influenced Nikkei dishes, a small wine menu, and cocktails on a Peruvian Pisco theme.

The young head-chef Adam Rawson, formerly of White Rabbits in Dalston, has ambitious plans for the restaurant, having hired a Peruvian sous-chef in February 2015. 

What We Ate: From the snack options, we had salt and aji squid (£4.50) and chicharones (deep fried pork belly) with sweet onions (£4.50).  The squid was tender and well flavoured, served with a powerful aji mayonaise.

The chicharones were superb, with tender, flavoursome pork in a crisp shell.

From the 'Sea' menu, we had the Cornish seabass with pumpkin, samphire, red onion, radish, coriander and leche de tigre (tiger's milk) (£9).  The tiger's milk was golden from aji amarillo, with a nice amount of chilli heat and not too much acidity or sweetness, which are often problematic features of leche de tigre outside of Peru.

The yellowfin tuna with soy and pickled potato ceviche (£9), was also excellent. Flavoured with hot rocoto chilli in the soy, wasabe and olive oil dressing, this had some good Peruvian Nikkei flavour combinations.

Next came the Cornish crab served with purple potato and green herbs (£10) in a richly infused saffron-dashi which was creamy and delicious, akin to a crab-bisque.

Scallops conchita (£5), was served in the shell, with beautifully seasoned quinoa and a zingy tomato and red onion salsa, this was a very refreshing dish.

From the 'Land' menu, we had the crispy lamb belly with green miso (£9). Lamb belly can be very fatty, and is great for braising then deep frying. The meat was succulent but crispy with the spicy green miso made from white miso, green jalapeno chillies, garlic and lime helping to cut through the fattiness.

We also had the beef cheek Lomo Saltado (£14). Lomo saltado is a Chinese-Peruvian dish, cooked by the 'Chifa' Chinese migrant labourers when they came to Peru in the early 20th century, and today is one of Peru’s national dishes. Pachamama's version featured some unusual ingredients like beef cheeks and parsnips not commonly seen in this dish. It had little resemblance to the dish we tried in Peru, and lacked the vibrancy of the other dishes we had on our visit.

From the 'Soil' menu, we tried the Peruvian asparagus with saffron yolk and peanut (£8). Although I could not taste much saffron, there was quite a kick of chilli heat, and the asparagus was well cooked with a delicious smoky flavour.

Better still was the fried aubergine with smoked yoghurt and pecan (£8) – with unctuously tender flesh within a crispy deep-fried exterior, the aubergine was delicious accompanied by the smoky, nutty yoghurt.

We shared a couple of desserts -  the suspiro de Limena (£6.50), served in a Champagne goblet, had a sweet lemony meringue, and a creamy base flavoured with tart passion fruit – great contrasting flavours and textures.

The torta de chocolate with toasted quinoa ice cream was also good, with a malted, nutty flavour to the ice cream, although the torta had the texture and flavour more akin to a mousse than a cake (£6.50).

What We Drank: We kicked off with a couple of cocktails - the Shining Path was a refreshing Champagne based drink, spiked with cinnamon and Abbott’s bitters. 

The Rosa del Inca was one of Pachamama’s many Pisco cocktails - infused with pink peppercorns and Volcano coffee beans, vermouth, Campari, orange bitters, this was delicious, with a bracing combination of bitter flavours and subtle coffee notes.

With our fish dishes, we had the house white, Matos Blanco from Spain (£7.50 for 250ml), which was non-descript, and completely outclassed by the food. Similarly, with the meat course, we had the house red, Matos Tinto Tempranillo from Spain (also £7.50 for 250ml) - again fruity but undistinguished, and a very poor partner for the food offered. 

Pachamama has a reputation for its cocktails, so as a digestif, we had a couple more (£8.50 each).  The Dulce de Chasca featured dulce de leche, rum, Pisco, vanilla syrup and chocolate bitters, and was an appropriately fruity yet potent end to the meal.

The Pichu Pichu had Volcano Peruvian coffee, Pisco, Kahlua, chocolate and vanilla bitters - a generous hit of potent coffee and chocolate flavours to complete an excellent dinner.

Likes: Particularly outstanding were the chicharones, the Nikkei yellowtail tuna, the scallops conchita, the fried aubergine and lamb belly. The cocktails were strong and well made.

Dislikes: The music is loud to the point of being almost night-club level, and if you lean against the walls, they shake. Although we really liked almost all the dishes, they were uniformly quite spicy, and this does not reflect our experience of food in Peru, where there was a variety of spicy, citrus and savoury dishes. The lomo saltado was the weakest link of our evening, tasting like an English beef stew - nothing wrong with that but not what we were looking for in a Peruvian restaurant serving one of its great national dishes. 

Verdict: There is some seriously good cooking at Pachamama. With a good Marylebone location and a well-priced menu, this is definitely a place to check out. Highly recommended.