How Peru’s food culture pushed Lima to ‘world’s best restaurants’ fame The capital’s achievement — four spots on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list — owes as much to Indigenous bounty as to chefs’ creativity
A dish on the Central restaurant tasting menu in Lima called Amazon Connection. It includes arapaima fish belly cured in turmeric and achiote, served with fermented cassava and infused cecina, or smoked pork. (Angela Ponce for The Washington Post) MORAY, Peru — Chef Virgilio Martínez chews a raw purple tuber as he listens to a Quechua-speaking subsistence farmer describe an Andean technique for hedging against inclement weather. Broad beans and pukutu, a rare, multicolored, ancient variety of corn, are planted together, Cleto Cusipaucar explains. If there are heavy rains, the maize will fail but the…Read more …