Blessed with a mind-blowingly fertile ecosystem—3,000 varieties of potatoes is just the half of it—Lima is emerging as a new global culinary epicenter. Kevin West meets the ingenious chefs who aren’t just inventing new ways of eating but are using food to forge a national identity.
Blessed with a mind-blowingly fertile ecosystem—3,000 varieties of potatoes is just the half of it—Lima is emerging as a new global culinary epicenter. Kevin West meets the ingenious chefs who aren’t just inventing new ways of eating but are using food to forge a national identity.At a little past 5 a.m., it was hard for me to keep up with Toshi Matsufuji, the slight twentysomething chef of Al Toke Pez, as he moved through Lima’s Villa Maria del Triunfo fish market, the city’s largest. For one thing, I was sluggish from a 24-course dinner the night before at Astrid y Gastón, a gastronomic palace run by the country’s most famous chef, Gastón Acurio. Matsufuji, on the other hand, rises early several times a week to shop for his tiny restaurant—which in local parlance is a huarique,or hole in the wall—that operates out of a narrow storefront in a gentrifying part of town with a few counter seats facing a primitive two-burner stove. The line of customers sometimes stretches up the block.
Matsufuji is accustomed to the market’s clangor, but I was simply overwhelmed by the oceanic kaleidoscope. There were tuna that appeared to have been made of aluminum, blunt-headed dorado, pin-cushion sea urchins, pink-fleshed swordfish nearly as thick through the waist as Matsufuji himself, and noble lenguado,a platter-shaped sole locally considered the ideal fish for ceviche, Peru’s national dish.
http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014- ... gastronomy
