Lima: South America’s Best Food City and Why Most Visitors Only Scratch the Surface

Lima has held a serious claim to being the best restaurant city in South America since roughly 2013, when Central by Virgilio Martinez entered the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. That claim has only strengthened since. The Peruvian culinary tradition combines Andean ingredients, Japanese immigrant technique (Nikkei cuisine), Chinese immigrant cooking (chifa), Spanish colonial flavors, and Pacific coastal seafood into something with no precise equivalent elsewhere. Coming to Lima specifically to eat is a legitimate travel strategy, and arguably more rewarding than Lima as a stopover city, which is how most visitors treat it.

The Food

Central has periodically topped the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. The tasting menu is structured around elevations – from Pacific ocean dishes to high-altitude Andean ingredients – and takes around three hours. Reservations open six months in advance and fill within days.

If you cannot get Central: La Mar by Gaston Acurio is widely cited for the best ceviche in the city, with a menu focused on the cured-raw seafood tradition of Peru’s coast. Maido, Mitsuharu Tsumura’s Nikkei restaurant, is where Japanese technique meets Peruvian ingredients – one of the most interesting culinary combinations in the city.

For eating without reservations or high prices: Canta Rana in Barranco serves excellent ceviche at neighbourhood prices. Mercado Surquillo No. 1 on Avenida Petit Thouars has been the city’s main fresh food market for decades; the prepared food stalls inside serve caldo de pollo and ceviche at breakfast for a few soles. This is where you eat if you want to understand what Lima actually eats rather than what it shows visitors.

Pisco sours are the national cocktail: pisco, lime juice, egg white, Angostura bitters. They vary significantly in quality; La Picanteria in Surquillo makes one of the better versions. Peruvian pisco (produced around Ica and Paracas) is a different and more complex product than Chilean pisco, despite the ongoing binational argument about provenance.

The Neighbourhoods

Miraflores is the upmarket residential and tourist district, on the clifftop above the Miraflores Malecon oceanfront promenade. It has the best hotels, the most international restaurants, and the safest street environment for tourists. It is also the blandest neighbourhood in the city; staying entirely in Miraflores misses most of what makes Lima interesting.

Barranco, immediately south of Miraflores, is the old bohemian district: Art Nouveau architecture, the Puente de los Suspiros, small art galleries, and the best nightlife in the city. More interesting than Miraflores and only marginally less safe.

The Centro Historico, Lima’s colonial centre, contains the Plaza Mayor, the Government Palace, and the cathedral where Francisco Pizarro’s remains are supposedly interred. Worth a half-day for the Spanish colonial architecture and for Museo Larco’s pre-Columbian collection.

Historical Sights

Huaca Pucllana is an adobe pyramid built by the Lima culture around 200 to 700 CE, located directly in the Miraflores residential neighbourhood in a way that is startling if you come across it unexpectedly. The site is lit at night; the restaurant at its base has the most dramatically situated outdoor dining setting in the city.

Museo Larco on Avenida Bolivar in Pueblo Libre holds the most significant collection of pre-Columbian Peruvian art outside the National Museum: gold, silver, and textile work from the Chimu, Moche, and Inca cultures. The famous erotic pottery collection, which Larco documented as an aspect of Moche culture, is taken seriously as an archaeological record of religious and social practice.

Getting Around

Lima is large and traffic is heavy. The El Metropolitano BRT runs a dedicated north-south corridor. Uber and Cabify are reliable taxi alternatives. Walking within individual neighbourhoods – Miraflores, Barranco, Surquillo – is practical. Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Chavez is in Callao, about 15 km from Miraflores, 30 to 45 minutes by taxi. Airport Express Lima runs a dedicated bus service.