Best Peruvian Restaurants Around the World

The best-scored peruvian place in each of 12 cities.

Regional variations

Criollo / coastal

Lima-centered. Ceviche cured in leche de tigre, tiradito (the sashimi-influenced sister dish), anticuchos (beef-heart skewers), causa (layered cold potato terrine with aji amarillo), arroz con mariscos. The cooking that travels best internationally.

Andean / highland

Cusco, Arequipa, Puno. Pachamanca (earth-oven cooking with hot stones), rocoto relleno (stuffed Arequipan chile), alpaca, cuy (guinea pig), chairo soup, potato in dozens of native varieties. Built for altitude, cold, and long winters.

Amazonian / selva

Iquitos, Tarapoto, Pucallpa. Paiche and dorado river fish, juane (rice and chicken in bijao leaf), tacacho con cecina, masato (fermented yuca drink), camu camu and cocona fruits. The least-known regional cuisine, increasingly featured in Lima tasting menus.

Nikkei (Japanese-Peruvian)

Built by 20th-century Japanese immigrants. Tiradito (Peruvian sashimi with criollo seasoning), Nikkei ceviche with ponzu, the maki acebichado, the work of Maido and the original Nobu canon. The world's most internationally influential Peruvian sub-cuisine.

Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian)

Cantonese migration in the 1850s built chifa, now a separate canonical Peruvian sub-cuisine. Lomo saltado (the wok-fired beef and chip dish on every Peruvian menu), arroz chaufa, tallarin saltado, wantan soup. Most Lima neighborhoods have a chifa within a few blocks.

Defining peruvian dishes

Ceviche

Raw white fish (corvina, lenguado) cured in lime juice, aji limo or aji amarillo, red onion, cilantro, salt. Served with sweet potato (camote) and choclo (Andean corn). The leche de tigre, the cure liquid, is drunk on its own.

Lomo saltado

Strips of beef wok-fired with red onion, tomato, aji amarillo, soy sauce, vinegar, served over rice with French fries. The defining chifa dish and arguably the most-eaten Peruvian dish at home.

Aji de gallina

Shredded chicken in a creamy sauce of aji amarillo, walnuts, bread, and parmesan, served with rice, boiled potato, olive, and egg. Spanish-influenced criollo cooking.

Anticuchos

Marinated beef-heart skewers grilled over charcoal, with aji panca, cumin, garlic, and vinegar. Street-cart classic across Lima.

Causa limena

Cold layered terrine of mashed yellow potato seasoned with aji amarillo and lime, filled with chicken, tuna, or seafood salad.

Tiradito

Raw fish sliced sashimi-thin, dressed in a leche de tigre or aji-based sauce, no onion or sweet potato. The Nikkei reinterpretation of ceviche.

Rocoto relleno

Arequipan rocoto chile stuffed with seasoned ground beef, raisins, olives, and cheese, baked. Rocoto is fierce; the dish is the Andean answer to chiles en nogada.

Pachamanca

Andean feast of meats, potatoes, fava beans, and humitas cooked underground on hot volcanic stones layered with marambay and other herbs. Inca-era technique still common in rural Peru.

Arroz con pato

Duck slow-cooked with cilantro, dark beer, and aji amarillo, served over green rice. Northern Peruvian (Chiclayo, Lambayeque) classic.

Suspiro a la limena

Lima's defining dessert: dulce de leche custard topped with port-flavored meringue. Sweet, dense, named for a lover's sigh.

How to order

Ceviche is lunch food, not dinner. Cevicherias close in the early afternoon, and ordering ceviche after 5pm is a tourist signal in Lima. At a cevicheria, start with a clasico (white fish, aji limo, red onion, sweet potato, choclo) before ordering anything more elaborate. Tiradito, leche de tigre as a shot, and a side of arroz con mariscos are the standard build.

At a criollo restaurant, order one anticucho or causa starter, then a stewed main like aji de gallina or seco de cordero, plus a lomo saltado for the table. At a chifa, lomo saltado, arroz chaufa, and wantan are the three pillars. At Nikkei rooms, do the chef's tasting; the cuisine is still defining itself and works best curated. The common rookie mistake is dousing ceviche in extra lime: it has been balanced for you. Aji sauces on the table are condiments, not toppings; a small spoonful is plenty.

What to drink with it

Pisco, the unaged grape brandy from the Pisco and Ica valleys, is the national spirit and the base of the pisco sour (pisco, lime, egg white, simple syrup, Angostura). With ceviche, the move is a chilled beer (Cusquena or Pilsen Callao) or a sauvignon blanc; the lime cure fights most reds. With anticuchos and grilled meat, a malbec or carmenere from neighboring Chile works well. Chicha morada, the purple-corn drink with pineapple, cinnamon, and clove, is the universal non-alcoholic pair. Inca Kola, the bright-yellow bubblegum-flavored soda, is a national obsession and pairs improbably well with chifa.

Where to eat it

Lima is the obvious answer and now ranks among the top food cities in the world, with Central, Maido, Kjolle, Astrid y Gaston, and Mayta operating at the highest tier. Cusco and Arequipa lead Andean cooking; Iquitos for Amazonian; Trujillo and Chiclayo for the criollo north. Outside Peru, the Nikkei tradition through Nobu put Peruvian seasoning into kitchens worldwide, and Lima-trained chefs now run rooms in New York (Llama San), London (Lima), Madrid, Miami, and Tokyo.

A short history

Peruvian cuisine took its modern shape in the 1990s and 2000s through Gaston Acurio's Astrid y Gaston, which trained a generation of chefs and reframed Peruvian food as fine-dining-worthy. Acurio's protege Virgilio Martinez at Central, with biologist Malena Martinez running Mater Iniciativa, took the project further by sourcing across Peru's altitudinal ecosystems. The cuisine's 5,000-year roots, Inca, pre-Inca, and the Spanish-African-Asian fusion that followed, gave them an unusually deep larder to work from.

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