Creamy, sticky, and raw: Food porn from Lima

When I suggest to Todd that if we grow multiple stomachs, like a ruminant, we could store some of Lima’s food for later digestion and enjoyment, I know we need to leave town. That or change our blog name to “Travel is Why We’re Fat.”

We could have done little else in Lima besides eat, snack, drink, then eat again. I swear, we’ve done things other than eat, but that’s not what this story is about. This story is about food porn. So settle in.

Ceviche lenguado at Canta Rana in Lima, Peru

Part of our challenge is that Peruvian portions are massive. I issue this verdict having grown up on Long Island, New York, renowned for half-pound servings of cream-sauced Italian pasta and Kosher deli sandwiches with pastrami piled two inches high.

For the most part, each individual dish we’ve ordered could have easily overfed us both. At Canta Rana we receive at least a pound of fish in our order of ceviche lenguado, plus the accompanying not-to-scale Peruvian corn and hunks of sweet potato.

The Spanish word for sole, lenguado, comes from the fish’s resemblance to a tongue, or la lengua. And my oh my, does this ceviche make our tongues happy. We’ve had several ceviches in Lima, and for all its laid-back atmosphere, Canta Rana’s is the most satisfying.

When we get tired of ceviche, we opt for tiradito. (I know what you’re thinking: tiradito and ceviche are about as different as mashed potatoes and causa.) We get our tiradito on at El Muelle, a chillax beach-front ready restaurant that seems misplaced on its Barranco side street.

Tiradito with three ssauces at El Muelle in Lima, Peru

Fish sliced like Japanese sashimi is lightly cooked by lime juice and, at El Muelle, topped with three sauces: Rocoto, red and spicy from pureed peppers. Huaincaina, yellow…and spicy from pureed peppers (oh Peru, you and your pepper fetish). And crema, tinted an unnerving purple from pureed olives. It isn’t the prettiest dish, but alongside a few cold beers in the late afternoon sunshine, we couldn’t have been more content.

One night, we break our backpacker budget and head to Chala for comida a little nueva. The dish that catches our eyes is the Ravioles Italo-Chaleños.

Ravioles Italo-Chalenos at Chala in Lima, Peru

Chala’s chefs take the ingredients of the well-known Peruvian dish, aji de gallina, deconstruct and then reassemble them with flair. Shredded chicken is packed into handmade ravioli, doused with yellow pepper cream sauce, and garnished with shrimp, walnuts, and hard-boiled quail eggs. We fork-fight over it.

Dessert is not normally where we spend our precious stomach-space, but Limeños make desserts that are impossible to resist. After a long day of sight seeing, we are revitalized by the thick crema volteada a.k.a. flan at El Cordano. We scarf it down even before our jamon del pais sandwich arrives.

Crema volteada at El Cordano in Lima, Peru

While walking through Parque Kennedy in the Miraflores neighborhood, we find ourselves drawn to a red cart where large-forearmed women fry up picarones, a Peruvian donut made with a sweet potato batter. Served straight out of the fryer, they get covered with a molasses syrup that attracts bees as effectively as it attracts us. We eat our picarones quickly, fussing and fanning over each bite to make sure no sugar-crazed bee surfs into our mouths on a piece of donut.

Fresh picarones in Parque Kennedy in Lima, Peru

One hot afternoon—there seem to be no other type of afternoon in Lima—I nap during a little downtime on a bus. Todd wakes me up to rush off at a stop well before our destination. He’s figured out that we’re near Manolo, known for its chocolate con churros, and wants to get him some. I’m not even hungry, still full from our second lunch, and a little cranky from being woken from my nap.

I regret nothing when I bite into my sugar-crusted churro relleno con manjarblanco, a fried pastry tube filled with a thick caramel made with whole milk. This churro even looks like a food porn set piece, money shot included.

Churros rellenos con manjarblanco at Manolo in Lima, Peru

Check out our other food porn stories from around the world.