P i s t a c h i o

For Vacations, published by Ensemble Travel, Fall, 2008

The soul of authentic Peruvian cuisine can be found in a humble spot called Soñia’s.

The soul of authentic Peruvian cuisine can be found in a humble place called Soñia’s, a popular Lima eatery that specializes in ceviche – fresh, raw fish dressed with lime juice and little else. The fish still carries the flavour of the ocean, and as a foil for the lime’s brightness, ceviche is traditionally served with sweet potato and corn.

In this neighbourhood, where there are cevicherías at every turn, Soñia’s has endured because, for the last 30 years, she has been cooking the fish that her husband pulls from the Pacific that morning. You don’t dine at Soñia’s. You eat what is likely to be the best ceviche you’ve ever had and you’ll try other fish, too, like the fried calamari.

Gourmet advisory: not all Peruvian eating is like this – a little out of the way, very casual and relatively unchanged over three decades. In fact, Lima is now considered to be the gastronomic capital of South America. The world has been there to eat, and the reviews are glowing. There are 12 cooking schools in Lima, and for good reason. There are more and more locals and visitors to please each year.

If Peru’s culinary tale begins with ceviche, it owes its success at least partly to the Spaniards who brought citrus during the conquests. They also brought African slaves, whose culinary stamp appears on tacu tacu, a fried patty of beans and rice with onions, chile paste and pork; and picarones, pumpkin donuts formed into rings by hand and serviced with raw sugar syrup flavoured with orange, anise seed, cinnamon and cloves.

After the slaves were emancipated in the middle of the 19th century, the Chinese immigrants arrived. They worked in factories, on farms, in homes and on the national railway. They introduced fresh ginger and soy sauce to Peru’s aji chile pastes. Stir-frying became popular and lomo saltado was born: marinated strips of beef, stir-fried with red onion, tomatoes, bell peppers, aji amarillo (yellow aji) and soy sauces, served with fried potatoes. Inland, the Chinese influence can be quickly spotted in tacachos, plantain dumplings with bacon.

Fifty years later, the Japanese came to work on cotton and sugar plantations. Tiradito is said to be the most cherished imprint the Japanese left on Peruvian cuisine. It’s often compared to sashimi for that reason, but it’s actually more like carpaccio. Tiradito is very thinly sliced raw fish, drizzled very lightly with a dressing. Substitute the fish with beef tenderloin and add shaved parmesan, and there’s the Italian classic.

In the early 1990s, newspaper publisher Bernardo Roca Rey began noticing a “movement” in Peruvian cuisine: a new generation of chefs bringing sophisticated techniques to traditional dishes. Roca Rey loved to cook, particularly with obscure ingredients. He was captivated by quinoa, which has a delicate nutty flavour, and its tiny opaque kernels become translucent when cooked. Quinoa pre-dates the Incas by 4200 years and almost disappeared entirely from the national diet. Today, quinoa is very popular internationally, thanks in part to chefs who like digging in their own culinary backyards and sharing their findings with the world.

In some countryside south of Lima serving as chef Cucho La Rosa’s backyard, he established his restaurant “La Casa De Don Cucho” and does some of his cooking outdoors. In this rustic getaway, he serves la cocina criolla, the creole cooking inherently Peruvian, with dishes like arroz con pata, duck with rice, and cuy, guinea pig that is roasted or deep-fried. For spirited imbibing, there’s plenty of chicha negra, the popular fermented drink made from purple potatoes. A typical dessert is often made with lúcama, the Andean fruit with bright yellow pulp. Don Cucho also has an admirable collection of batánes, rock vessels used in an ancient technique of mashing aji chiles with a large held by two hands, the outsized two-fisted Peruvian twist on mortar and pestle.

Gastón Acurio is Don Cucho’s cosmopolitan counterpart and Peru’s super-star chef. He has a modest countenance and an impressive restaurant empire. Acurio’s numerous videos, shot mostly in his beloved Lima, are all over the web, and in them he tells the story of a cuisine he was born to promote. His training is classical French, via the prestigious Cordon Bleu Paris school, and he also cooked in Madrid. But he soon made his way back to Lima and opened “Astrid y Gastón,” so that he could prepare Peruvian food with some worldly culinary polish. It was so smart and so hip that the restaurant became a valuable export. He opened one in Quito, Bogatá, Salvador, Caracas, Panama and Madrid. Acurio also has “La Mar,” a high-end cevichería that can stand as the best Peru has to offer. This restaurant proved to be an excellent export, too, and in September, Acurio made an American debut with “La Mar” in San Francisco.

Acurio also generously shares credit with his contemporaries, where it’s due. When travelogue chef Anthony Bourdain planned his episode on Peru, he chose Acurio to explain ceviche to the uninitiated. Acurio explained how there are 2,000 cevicherías in Lima, and when Bourdain asked him what was special about the one where Acurrio chose to take him, Acurio’s answer was seamless: “She cooks the fish that her husband caught that morning. That’s his boat, here’s the restaurant.” That’s Soñia stepping out of the kitchen and dancing for the cameras.

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