You think I’m going to talk about Paris?
When I wrote this title, I quickly ran a mental radar sweep, and in my impression, for most countries, no matter how rich the cuisine may be, the capital city still somehow fails to become a true benchmark. Except Lima.
Chinese Peruvians Tusan
Lima is far away. A nonstop flight from New York takes 8 hours. From China, there still isn’t even a direct flight; with one connection, it takes at least 20-plus hours. So far away that an elder who has lived in Lima for more than 20 years said I was the first person from their hometown to come looking for them.
175 years ago, the first Chinese to arrive in Lima spent 120 days getting there. Over the following two decades, 120,000 Chinese came to Peru as laborers to escape war and unrest (Spanish: culí, coolie). After a long and difficult period of darkness and hardship, they finally put down roots. In addition to bringing the virtues of perseverance and hard work, these fellow countrymen also brought Chifa.
Walk through the streets of Lima and Chifa is everywhere. Joking with friends, I said Peru must be the country with the highest average level of Chinese proficiency, because at the very least everyone knows one Chinese word: Chifa.
Chifa means “eat” and comes from Cantonese. It refers to all Peruvian Chinese dishes (or Chinese-Peruvian dishes), a fascinating fusion of Eastern cooking techniques and South American ingredients. Chifa restaurants are affordable and delicious, and are very popular with locals and travelers alike.
While strolling through Lima’s old quarter, our guide asked me to teach everyone how to say “chi fan” in standard Mandarin pronunciation—the talent every Chinese tourist is expected to show.
A proper Chifa must know how to make delicious Chaufa (fried rice). Chinese rice stir-fried over high heat, paired with locally abundant squid, shrimp, and shellfish, then finished with the soul of the dish—soy sauce. It is an overwhelming attack of deliciousness on the palate. The only thing is, this huge plate of goodness may very well have been made by... a Venezuelan.
Venezuela, which has fallen into hardship in recent years, has become a source of cheap labor for neighboring countries, and hiring a Venezuelan costs only one-third as much as hiring a Chinese chef. So in Lima, eating a carefully prepared Chinese meal made by a Venezuelan is also a rather bizarre experience.
The signature dish is Lomo Saltado. Beef tenderloin is cut into strips and stir-fried with onions and tomatoes, seasoned with soy sauce, cooking wine, pepper, and scallions, then served with rice or fries.
A friend treated me to this Lomo Saltado at Tanta, a famous chain restaurant in Lima, and at first glance I immediately confirmed: yes, where I come from, this dish is called beef stir-fried with scallions over rice.
The second time I had it was at a remote little restaurant in the countryside near Machu Picchu. The tablecloth had a distinctly Inca feel, but the taste was still that same Chinese flavor. That was further confirmation that Peru is a country where you don’t need to travel with Lao Gan Ma or instant noodles.
Whether in a big city or a remote backwater, this has almost become Peru’s king of home-style dishes. In a Peruvian housewife’s cookbook published as early as 1903, it was already teaching people how to make it. At that time, saltado—stir-frying—did not yet exist in any Spanish-language culinary vocabulary.
The restaurant owner who cooked for me was clearly also a housewife. After finishing the dish, she sat down next to me and pulled out her phone to watch a drama—an actual Chinese palace intrigue series, with Spanish subtitles! That moment was even more shocking than eating Chinese food on Inca land.
Chinese influence in Peru is no longer what it once was. Lima’s largest supermarket chain now, Wong, was founded by someone whose ancestors came from Zhongshan, Guangdong; their surname is Huang. This retail empire spans supermarkets, shopping malls, and convenience stores, with operations all across Peru.
The seeds planted 175 years ago have sprouted and grown today. It’s amazing.
The melting pot
Chinese immigrants were not the only ones bringing new things.
Half a century after the Chinese, Japanese immigrants also came to Peru to seek their fortune. Their arrival helped establish the status of Ceviche (Peru’s national dish).
There are many theories about the origin of Ceviche. Some say indigenous people were preparing raw fish in a similar way 2,000 years ago, but I still prefer to believe that some mysterious force from the East truly uncovered Peru’s treasure.
Ceviche is raw fish cured in lime juice. Like sashimi, it is raw fish, and in some ways it also evolved from sashimi. The fish is cut into small pieces and soaked in the acidic juice of lemon or citrus to cure it, then mixed with sliced onions, chili peppers, and salt.
It places slightly less emphasis on the ingredients themselves, but adds much more of the sour-and-spicy sensory punch of Latin American passion.
I first tried this Japanese-Latin American passion at a little place called Punto Azul. It was a bit over the top, and I had to shoulder it all alone.
Lima is one of the few capitals in South America with a coastline, yet it is not the bikini-clad, passionately dancing scene on a blue sea that you might imagine. Locals say, “Our sky is gray, the sea is gray, and even our city is gray.”
So the people of Lima pour all of their passion into food. The gloomy Lima is said to go 600 years without rain.
Heaven favors Lima: the nearby waters are Peru’s fishing grounds, one of the world’s four great fishing grounds, and the abundance of seafood is astonishing. Even China’s deep-sea fishing vessels come here to catch giant squid.
For that reason, Ceviche has no fixed ingredients from south to north: shark, sea bass, and trout can all be used. The citrus marinade also depends entirely on the chef’s own judgment; there are almost no two fish dishes in lime juice that are exactly alike.
The Nikkei cuisine that developed from this not only took root locally, but has also begun to become popular around the world (to be honest, it really is a little annoying that Japanese food always sells for more than Chinese food).
Peruvians love chicken. It is said they eat 130 million chickens every year—truly, not a single chicken can leave Peru alive. There are many ways to prepare chicken as well. Ají de Gallina, a creamy yellow-pepper chicken stew, sounds like it must have been invented by someone of French descent. And on those late-night streets returning from Cusco to Lima, a warming bowl of chicken noodle soup that everyone lined up for had Asian character.
But what Peruvians eat most is still roast chicken. In any setting—classmates or family gatherings, an ordinary daily meal, or a holiday celebration—walking into a Pollo a la Brasa restaurant is always a safe bet.
You can order a whole chicken, half a chicken, or a quarter chicken, with seasonings such as dark beer, rosemary, and even pisco, a local spirit, giving it a distinctive flavor. One can only wonder how KFC survives in Peru.
And yet, can you imagine that this dish, considered a national cultural heritage and even given an official holiday, was only introduced to Peru by Swiss immigrants in the 1950s?
In that sense, Peru’s ability to absorb new things is really fast.
If other countries can only be said to have made local improvements to Peru, then Spain nearly remade Peru entirely.
Since the Spanish defeated the Inca Empire in 1532 and established the Viceroyalty of Peru, Lima has remained the center of Spanish rule in South America. It is now hard to list, one by one, how food customs from the Iberian Peninsula have influenced the city; broadly speaking, Spain is everywhere, from ingredients and cooking to the way people eat.
In this dish of paella, perhaps you can glimpse the shadow of its homeland from centuries ago, among the lagoons and fields of Valencia.
Limeños are also adamant that their paella, after soaking up plenty of broth, is surely far better than the half-cooked Spanish original.
If New York is a cultural melting pot, Lima is more like a cultural furnace. Lima’s love of diversity has, over the course of history, broken everything apart and blended it back together to create a brand-new Peru.
Innovation
Peru is not a huge country, with an area of 1.29 million square kilometers, roughly the size of Tibet, but its landscapes are exceptionally varied.
In the north are dense, vast jungles that are the source of the Amazon River and account for one-eighth of the entire rainforest; in the west, a straight 2,200-kilometer coastline; and in the south, the world’s second-largest plateau, after the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
This rich geography brings even richer produce, making Peru a country beloved by top chefs, and Lima the best stage of all. Four of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023 were in Lima (Paris, Tokyo, and London each had three), and the champion was Central, a restaurant on a charming corner in Barranco, south of Lima.
Sitting at Central’s table is like taking a trek across Peru with your tongue. The chef uses altitude as a measuring stick, guiding diners across mountains and seas to measure the land. Fourteen courses, one altitude for each dish, present the flavors of Peru.
For example, below 15 meters above sea level, grouper, razor clams, and clams brought by the warm South Pacific current.
At 190 meters above sea level, the strange piranha from Amazon waters and watermelon seeds.
At 600 meters, macambo, a rare ingredient unique to dry tropical regions and a close relative of cacao, paired with highland honey wine and lime.
At 1,950 meters, white, purple, and golden corn from the Urubamba Valley. Peru is a corn giant; there are dozens of corn varieties alone, in all colors. Corn holds a prominent place in the Peruvian diet.
At 4,200 meters, an Andean plateau world of roots made up of oca, amaranth, and mashua. In fact, the Inca were very ahead of their time: the quinoa and amaranth they cultivated back then are now promoted as superfoods.
Photo credit to friend @SoullessGram
A four-hour tasting is less a tasting than a grand performance, with the handsome Virgilio Martínez conducting Peru’s many ingredients in an entirely new way.
He said that before he had children, he used to travel every month to seek out ingredients at their source. Now, heading into the Amazon remains his choice whenever he faces bottlenecks and difficulties.
In Central’s garden are displays of all kinds of unique ingredients from across the country, shown in their “living” form.
Next door to the restaurant is another performance directed by his beautiful wife, Pía León. Her restaurant, Kjolle, is ranked No. 16 on this year’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Not long after we left, the chef from Barcelona’s Disfrutar also came to visit this Peruvian culinary genius. The culinary masters sat down to talk, and after returning home, they duly went on to win this year’s No. 1 restaurant title.
Thanks to its innovation and mystery, Peruvian cuisine is gradually coming into bloom. The chef’s new restaurant in Tokyo, Maz, earned two Michelin stars as soon as it opened, and the Hong Kong location of Ichu happens to be in Central. Could that be a little joke?
Street Food
Lima has high art, and it also has the everyday. In a market a few blocks from Central, squeezing through narrow aisles and crowded people, you find another form of food.
Lively, enthusiastic, and open, Canta Ranita is like thousands upon thousands of ordinary small eateries in Lima. If going to Central is like attending a ball in a palace, then coming here feels as relaxed as being at home.
Order a serving of ceviche, and even the table seems to be speaking.
The diners coming and going are all familiar faces, and the way the chefs laugh out loud is another kind of love for food. How could you not be happy eating in an atmosphere like this every day?
Street food may be even more important in Peruvians’ lives.
Years ago, Netflix made a documentary series, Street Food: Latin America, devoted to uncovering street stories across the Americas.
I followed the trail too, standing in line for three quarters of an hour among a group of foreign tourists, swapping Lima food tips with one another.
There really is no difference between trendy spots in China and abroad, or restaurants made famous by documentaries: long lines, lots of tourists, and not very good food. Whether it was marinated raw fish, fried rice, or fried squid, none of it was really up to par.
But don’t lose faith in Lima’s street food.
Earlier than Netflix, in the 19th century, a man named Pancho Fierro vividly documented the street vendors of Lima in watercolor paintings. His more than 1,200 works are like Weibo and Moments from two hundred years ago, giving us a glimpse of that era’s world.
Every food in the paintings can still be eaten today, such as the Anticucho in the center, or grilled skewers.
Peruvians love barbecue just as much as we do. We’ve eaten all kinds of grilled meat, grilled vegetables, and grilled chicken intestines in Lima, but the absolute favorite is unquestionably grilled beef heart, Anticuchos de Corazón.
As you walk through the streets of Lima, if you suddenly catch the scent of charcoal smoke and meat filling the air, you know an anticucho is just around the corner.
The beef heart is cut into small pieces, seasoned with strong flavors—chili, vinegar, and cumin—then grilled over an open flame. The tenderness of the heart and the charred aroma from the barbecue are a perfect match. Usually, each skewer of grilled beef heart ends with a small piece of grilled potato, enough to fill the stomach of anyone short on cash.
After all, centuries ago, this was a masterpiece created by enslaved people using the offal that plantation owners did not want.
My first skewer of grilled beef heart was actually something I ate properly at a upscale restaurant in Lima, El Honero, but good food knows no class; it tasted no different from the one I had on a cold night in Cusco, squeezed in among a crowd of locals.
In Kennedy Park downtown, countless stray cats are always gathered, along with a lively group of vendors. The iconic red-and-white carts are the stalls themselves.
Peruvians’ sweet tooth can probably be seen from their figures. All over the park, they sell sweet potato and pumpkin doughnuts drizzled with syrup, Picarones; purple corn pudding, Mazamorra; mashed potato dish, Causa; and churros so sweet they make you uneasy. It’s a paradise for sweet-tooth lovers.
One of the most famous Picarones stalls is run by a couple who have been selling sweets for 28 years. He said he’ll keep selling, because doughnuts have no end.
I’m so glad I had that brief stretch of time tasting Lima’s street food, rediscovering and drawing closer to this city.
By the time I got here, I realized I had used exactly 3,800 Chinese characters. If it were Su Dongpo, he would probably need just seven:
I would not mind staying in Lima forever.