{"id":2436,"date":"2015-07-27T16:29:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T21:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theagostins.com\/?p=2436"},"modified":"2015-07-27T16:29:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T21:29:39","slug":"foodie-fantasies-come-true-in-lima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/?p=2436","title":{"rendered":"Foodie Fantasies Come True in Lima"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to be honest, as a whole, South American food has not been my favorite. There have certainly been some amazing meals (I\u2019m lookin at you, Borag\u00f3<\/a>, my love!), but as a whole Argentina, Chile and Bolivia aren\u2019t doing a lot with flavors or spices and have a special way of completely ignoring the existence of vegetables and fruits. (unless you love mayonnaise, white bread and sugar)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been looking forward to Peruvian food for the last few months \u2013 it has a reputation for some of the best food in the world \u2013 and Lima is a the capital of that! We basically planned our entire time in Lima around eating.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s this list of the \u201cTop 50 Restaurants in the World<\/a>\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s definitely the most widely known international list and has the best google ranking. Rick and I are very suspect of exactly how the rankings are calculated\u2026 we\u2019ve been meaning to ask on the blog, do any of you chefs and foodies have a recommendation as to the best list of top international restaurants?<\/p>\n

But for this trip to Lima, this list<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>is what we\u2019ve got to work with and so far the restaurants hadn\u2019t disappointed. We went to Borag\u00f3 in Santiago based on the recommendation of the list and it was incredible!<\/p>\n

Lima has three restaurants on the list so of course we were going to try to go to all three\u2026 but of course we also didn\u2019t have any reservations. Thanks to a gift card from some very generous friends and Rick’s\u00a0Marriott points, we got to stay in the JW Marriott \u2013 which translates to a real shower and getting to look cleaned up \u2013 and asked the concierge to help us with reservations.<\/p>\n

She looked at us like we were crazy and informed us that Central (#4 on the list) is booked through August, Astrid y Gaston takes reservations a month out and Maido is \u201cvery popular\u201d. Still she tried calling them all and got the predictable answer, they were all full.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re not so easily throw off the trail of amazing food!<\/p>\n\n

So we got dressed up in our fanciest backpacker clothes and decided we would show up at opening time at the restaurant and see if there was a cancellation or a seat at the bar.<\/p>\n

….Central \u2013 Night 1 \u2013 Arrived at 7:30. Were told it was a private event. Didn\u2019t make it past the door.<\/p>\n

…Maido \u2013 Night 1 – Arrrived at 8:00. Hostess laughed at us for trying to walk up. Escorted out the door.<\/p>\n

…Astrid y Gaston \u2013 Night 1 \u2013 Called at 8:30. No cancellations.<\/p>\n

We were not off to a good start\u2026\u00a0We decide the next day to try for lunch reservations and have the concierge make the calls again. No luck. So we decide to try showing up again.<\/p>\n

This time we\u2019re in luck and after waiting in the bar area for 30 minutes, Central has a table for us! We of course do the 17-course tasting menu with wine pairings.<\/p>\n

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The highlight of meal for us was the plating \u2013 all of the dishes were small works of art, truly beautiful! Unfortunately, though, the flavors and execution did not deliver for the most part. There seemed to be a lot of supurlfous ingredients and techniques that really didn\u2019t do anything for the food\u2026 it was just kinda there for the sake of being there and seeming fancy. For example, the \u201ccaviar\u201d of bacteria from the altiplano that topped the chicken\u2026 no flavor, didn\u2019t really add any texture, just there to say it was there.<\/p>\n\n

The theme of the tasting menu reminded us a bit of Borag\u00f3, in that it was about ingredients from different parts of the country. Central did it by elevation, going from -20M below sea level (razor clams), all of the way to 3,900M above sealevel which include a three piece bread course with coca bread, high Andean herb butter, and uniquely shaped breads.<\/p>\n\n

Our favorite dish of the menu was the razor clams. They completely stole the show! They were delicate, sweet, slightly salty and so fresh I swear some little sous chef had to run out and scuba dive for them when we walked in. They were paired with \u201csweet cucumber\u201d which is more like a sweet-savory fruit. The picture doesn\u2019t do the dish justice. This was our second time to have razor clams in Lima and they have quickly become one of my all time favorite seafoods!<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong>Another win was the octopus and coral (yes, coral!) dish. The coral is the cotton candy looking blue stuff… it had the texture of pork skins, but a nice light seawater-kissed flavor.<\/p>\n

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While the names of the dishes were clever for the menu theme, it came across like most dishes might have been a great concept in the beginning, but the ideator of the dish passed it off to someone else after the original concept\u2026 and that person was forced trying to shove what they could actually do and the ingredients they had into a pre-set description. We\u2019ve all been on both sides of that\u2026 you have a great, grandiose idea for a project, then hand it off and the way it gets brought to life is just so much less than you expected\u2026. Or on the other side, trying to bring to life this impossibly huge idea. In quite a few cases the primary ingredient which tied the dish to the theme and dish\u2019s name, and was the highlight of the description, was no more than a smear of emulsion of that ingredient on top of the dish. For example, the \u201cRiver Scales\u201d dish with description \u201cRiver Snails \u2013 Gamitana \u2013 Sangre de Grado\u201d \u2013 there was a drizzle of emulsion of river snail on top. The same was true for the dish that said it had Smoked Duck in it. But, hey, they sure as heck were pretty!<\/p>\n\n

I think the final blows were the veal dish and the potato dish. (here\u2019s where I become the mean food critic, I guess). The veal dish was supposedly slowly cooked for long hours, with a traditional sauce on it. I expected ridiculously tender meat, and instead got rehydrated jerky \u2013 it was chewy. And the sauce was way too overpowering and sweet, like a cheap BBQ sauce. We couldn\u2019t get ourselves to finish it.\u00a0\"P1200681\"<\/a>The potato dish was fairly mundane, until I took a bite of the onion garnish and was taken aback by how overpowering the onion flavor was \u2013 like sticking my tongue in a jar of onion powder. I said something to Rick about it, and he looked surprised and said, \u201cReally? Mine has no flavor what so ever\u201d. So we traded plates and sure enough, his had no flavor and mine was grossly onion-y. But again, pretty plating\u2026.<\/p>\n

\"P1200655\"<\/a>The wine pairings were pretty fantastic, when you got a wine pairing. There was a great Riesling that started it off \u2013 perfectly off-dry and well paired. And other Chardonnay that was quite good, along with a single red wine pairing that we really enjoyed. I was a bit disappointed that a few times the wine pairing was for multiple courses. One of the courses was paired with a cocktail that was less than exciting, and one was paired with a beer \u2013 not a particularly unique craft beer or anything, just a standard Peruvian beer.<\/p>\n

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We did end on a good note with the Amazonian Rainforest dessert featuring Rose Apple and Lemongrass, and then the Cacoa icecream dish (but it featured Chaco Clay shavings\u2026 which was really just colored white chocolate, again just there for show).<\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Maybe it was it\u2019s ranking as the #4 restaurant in the world that set up our high expectations, or the aloof nature of the staff, or just their reputation \u2013 but it didn\u2019t quite live up the hype. Still we enjoyed our lunch and the experience.<\/p>\n

\u2026the next two restaurants on our culinary tour definitely did not disappoint\u2026<\/p>\n

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I have to be honest, as a whole, South American food has not been my favorite. There have certainly been some amazing meals (I\u2019m lookin at you, Borag\u00f3, my love!), but as a whole Argentina, Chile and Bolivia aren\u2019t doing a lot with flavors or spices and have a special way of completely ignoring the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[40,229,230,225],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-peru","tag-food","tag-lima","tag-luxury","tag-peru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickagostin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}