Good, fresh food is widely available in Peru. For the most part, food is prepared from scratch and each plate is served as it is prepared. This means the polite US custom of waiting till everyone is served before eating is impractical.
Most restaurants, from large to very small, offer pages of selections including such categories as lamb, meat, trout, cuy (guinea pig) pasta and chicken. Guinea pig and trout are Peruvian specialties; the meat category includes beef and alpaca. Most meals include an accompaniment of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and avocado (all peeled). Almost all meals are served with some type of potato. The potato originates in Peru and the country grows some 2,000 varieties.
While we really enjoyed our $/.15 sole (roughly $5.45 US) soup/salad, meal, drink lunches in Aguas Calientes, we splurged for a number of meals. A splurge means spending between $/.23- $/.36 soles, or $ 8.40-13.00 US. Hey, good food does not have to be expensive!
Below are some pictures from our splurges:
This is a polenta dish with a chili sauce served with pieces of the local, mild cheese thinly sliced on top. John was not disappointed with this option. The meal came from Cicciolina’s, a local tapas restaurant. Everything, including the pasta is handmade. (John, our friend Barbara and I enjoyed lunch at this restaurant in 2004)
This was my meal at the same restaurant, a basil pasta dish with garlic, tomatoes and mushrooms…delish!
Daniel ordered a purple ravioli stuffed with lamb. We are not sure exactly what was used to produce the purple color but again, yummy!
From another restaurant in Cusco, this is a sliced cuy appetizer (so to speak). Cuy is usually served gutted, laying on it’s back with it’s feet straight up in the air. John and I did not have enough nerve to try cuy on our last visit but bravery can come in numbers so we ordered this dish as an appetizer.
No one really had much of a stomach for this dish but we each took a slice. The meat is dark, greasy and definitely does NOT taste like chicken. The bones are small and hard to pick out. I think we each had a bite or two and left the rest on the plate. By the way, the salad had a wonderful vinaigrette and the potatoes were great!
My meal at the same restaurant as the cuy. This is an alpaca steak with caramelized onions and potatoes. Alpaca does not taste like beef or buffalo. When cooked properly (as this was) it is melt in your mouth tender and tasty. Restaurants suggest that alpaca should be cooked no less than medium.
Andean sushi. This was our appetizer on the train from Cusco to Puno (10 hours). We are not sure exactly what was in the dish but it was great! The base is a vegetable wrap. The top is a combination of rice noodles and sweet potato sticks.
Food on the train was served with precision. Waiters would line the aisle and each person was served at exactly the same time. As the recipients of this service, we were fascinated. The waiter above is holding John’s meal, sliced beef, potatoes with a bit of cheese on top.
This is my train meal, vegetable lasagna stuffed with mushrooms, onions and other vegetables. The only cheese in the dish sits on top…again the local, mild cheese. Note the glass of orange juice just above the plate. This is fresh squeezed OJ. Every glass we ordered, even at the smallest restaurants, was fresh squeezed.
The last picture is the dessert served on our train trip, rice pudding. Strawberries were the fruit of choice for this dish. IMHO, rice does not belong in pudding. After one bite, my pudding went uneaten.
