Eating in Peru

(This entry is dedicated to Amy ;-)

Peruvian restaurants and service are vastly better than I expected... and generally as good as my favorite U.S. restaurants. As I mentioned in another post, service is much better. I´ve been able to put my finger on the difference over the last few days: wait staff know the ingredients and flexibility of the dishes, rather than needing to "ask the kitchen" about these issues (or worse yet, making something up when they don´t know). Even if they don´t really speak English, they know enough English food words to handle most questions.

I don´t have time now for complete detail, but one good example of Peruvian cuisine is that you can always get a healthful and satisifactory lunch by ordering "ensalada mixto" ' - a mixed salad. The worst one I had was yesterday, and it was quite good: tomato, cucumber, and avocado slices artfully arranged over fresh lettuce, with olive oil and a light vinegrette dressing (made of white wine vinegar, lemon, and black pepper) on the side. (This for $4 US at a rooftop restaurant in Arequipa with spectacular views of the surrounding snow-capped peaks as well as the street below - at which an Andean folk quartet was busking. When they heard me applauding after a number, the leader came up and sold us a CD!).

A more typical mixed salad would not include lettuce, but would have fresh peas, carrots, string beans, and other vegetables that in the U.S. are more typically served cooked.

Garlic and the onion family are used in specific Peruvian entrees, but they are not gratuitously thrown into everything else, so I did not find it hard to avoid them. I even got to have some dishes which in the U.S. are always "poisoned" for me: tomato soup, asparagus soup, and - believe it or not - potato salad, which was absolutely wonderful. Peruvians are rightfully proud of their several hundred local varieties of potato. They also don´t put onion in their mayonaise.

Their scale of "spicy hot" corresponds to one-pepper status in the U.S., though. They have hot peppers, but they use them very sparingly, even when asked to use "mucho".

Lisa and Ariel are back from visiting a school, so it´s time to go find some lunch. Yum!

- Gary