World Travel Awards 2014 names Peru the 'Best Culinary Destination In South America'

© Enrique Castro Mendivil - Promperu

The 2014 World Travel Awards has awarded Peru as the "Best Culinary Destination in South America" for the third consecutive year. The country, which has become a famous tourist destination for Machu Picchu, beat other Latin American competitors, including: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. 

Peru was bestowed the honor at the World Travel Awards South & Central America Gala Ceremony 2014 in Quito, Ecuador. Peru's ambassador in Ecuador, Elizabeth Astete, represented the country at the awards reports El Comercio. In addition to this honor, the South American nation received awards for being "South America's Leading Cultural Destination" and "South America's Leading Heritage Destination." 

Earlier this year, the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards honored four Latin American eateries. Dubbed as the Oscars of fine dining, the awards also honor restaurants by geographic location, chefs, and lifetime achievement. Two of the four Latin American restaurants were in Lima, Peru: Central and Astrid y Gaston. Central was also awarded with the "Highest Climber" award.

Source: Latin Times

Food of the Andes by the Golden Gate

SAN FRANCISCO has a well-deserved reputation for restaurant fare that is freshly inventive, but with studiously authentic roots. Gastón Acurio, a celebrity chef in Lima, Peru, known for his novo-Andino cuisine, which adds modern sensibilities about freshness, presentation and technique to the culinary traditions of Peru, took note of this when considering where to open his beachhead restaurant in the United States.

“In San Francisco, people love to eat, and are open to new cultures and flavors,” Mr. Acurio said. “It’s the best place for us to start our dream of bringing our food to America.”

The city’s connection to Peru dates back to Gold Rush days, when pisco, white Peruvian brandy, was the drink of choice. So late last year, Mr. Acurio opened La Mar Cebicheria Peruana (Pier 1 ½; 415-397-8880; www.lamarcebicheria.com), adding to a collection of Peruvian restaurants to make San Francisco perhaps the best place in North America to sample Peru’s rapidly evolving, fervid foodie scene.

A new generation of often classically trained chefs (Mr. Acurio studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris) is making wildly creative use of Peru’s diversity. The country’s climate zones range from Amazonian to alpine, nurturing all kinds of foods, and its riot of cultural influences includes Andean, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and African.

“By nature, Peruvian cuisine is a fusion cuisine,” said Alejandro Reccio, chef de cuisine at Limón, an elegantly boisterous Peruvian restaurant in the Mission District. Limón (524 Valencia Street; 415-252-0918; www.limon-sf.com) was recently closed for remodeling but is reopening soon. Meanwhile, an annex, Limón Rotisserie (1001 South Van Ness Avenue; 415-821-2134; www.limonrotisserie.com), is serving a limited but well-executed menu focusing on pollo a la brasa — rotisserie chicken.

Ceviche, the classic dish of raw fish marinated in lime juice and spices, contains echoes of Inca dishes, but with limes, a Spanish introduction. In its modern form, it arose at the hands of Japanese chefs employed in the kitchens of Peruvian gentry. At Limón, the ceviche de pescado ($9.25) is dependably good; a zingy sauce and delectable choclo (big Peruvian corn) kernels enliven toothsome chunks of halibut.

Limón combines sophisticated interpretations of Peruvian cuisine like this with exquisitely executed, unembellished Peruvian comfort food like pollo a la brasa ($9.50 for a half chicken). Marinated in oregano, cumin and lime, it was tender with a lightly spiced bite. It was accompanied by dipping sauces made with Andean herbs and peppers.

Piqueo’s (830 Cortland Avenue; 415-282-8812; www.piqueos.com), in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, is a red, intimate corner with a small, bustling open kitchen and the friendly vibe that is de rigueur at San Francisco’s Peruvian restaurants. For five years, the chef, Carlos Altamirano, has supplied this quiet neighborhood with daring novo-Andino inventions. They include plates of tequeños ($10), wispy wontons filled with ground squid, fried and dusted in sugar and cinnamon; and pastel de choclo ($10), a mounded torte of choclo and potato alive with peppery watercress.

On a more basic level, numerous small restaurants around San Francisco serve the straightforward fare of Lima’s neighborhoods.

At one such place, Mi Lindo Peru (3226 Mission Street; 415-642-4897), a cheerful, unpretentious space of fake wood paneling and Inca kitsch, the ceviche ($14.95) is a big pile of seafood that with a hoppy Cusqueña lager ($4) could constitute a great lunch on its own. But I followed it up with parihuela ($15.95), a classic Peruvian bouillabaisse overflowing with soft, yielding chunks of fish that contrasted with chewy squid and clam in a rich red broth.

Just up the street, I found Inkas (3299 Mission Street; 415-648-0111; www.inkasrestaurant.com), a lively spot in an old, high-ceilinged bank building, and joined a happy, noisy lunch crowd (including lots of happy, noisy children) for more basic fare: coastal Peruvian dishes as they might be created by a home cook. This meant that classics like ceviche mixto ($14) and pollo saltado (chunks of chicken sautéed with peppers, onions and French fries, $12) were filling without being inspired. Only the anticuchos, skewers of beef heart ($7), really stood out: they were perfectly done, like succulent lean steak, peppery and piquant with a wash of lime.

La Mar, Mr. Acurio’s new establishment, is a big, elegant space overlooking San Francisco Bay. Moody blue light is combined with dark wood and tiles. But flavors seemed to take a back seat to presentation in some of its small plates on the night of my visit.

The ceviches ($16 to $19) were lovely assemblages of fish, but the sauces seemed a little wan. Cebiche Nikei ($17) presented succulent tuna with Japanese cucumber and avocado that only made me miss sushi.

The causas ($11 to $12) at La Mar take the form of delicate cups of suave, cool whipped potatoes of startling hues topped with subtle delicacies, rather than the filling snack that goes by that name in coastal Peru. These causas verged on conceptual: better seen and not tasted.

But the mains were satisfying. Arroz norteño ($24) was smoky, with succulent calamari and sparkling salsa criolla. Cau cau ($31) — roasted scallops with a corn risotto — were succulent and sweet, set free by simple flavors and a pleasant saltiness.

And desserts were stellar: exquisite chocolate bombs called buñuelos ($12), and dessert spring rolls ($10) stuffed with sweet rice pudding and served with bright mango sorbet and fresh mint serving as counterpoint to the elegant crunch.

In the end, it was delightful. Inside La Mar, the crowd grew and the sound rose to a roar. Outside, lights gleamed in the black bay water. And Mr. Acurio’s vision — to make ceviche as known and beloved as sushi — seemed a noble cause indeed.

Gaston Acurio boosts Peru's culinary confidence

By VICTORIA BEKIEMPIS Associated Press Writer
Posted: Aug. 22, 2008

LIMA, Peru — It's a confidence issue, really.

That's why you've probably never tasted aji de gallina, deboned chicken drizzled with creamy chili sauce, or lomo saltado, Peru's classic beef and tomato stir-fry, says Gaston Acurio, the nation's wildly popular leading chef.

"We have a mentality: Nobody will like our food even though it's tasty," he said recently from his breezy culinary workshop in Lima's bohemian Barranco neighborhood. "People think the things Peruvians do are third world."

Acurio, however, lacks neither confidence nor schemes for changing his country's global culinary status.

His name might be mostly unknown in the U.S., but here he enjoys celebrity akin to Bobby Flay, thanks in part to a string of successful restaurants and a popular television program in which he scouts Peru's out-of-the-way gastronomic gems.

He already has expanded his culinary empire with high-end eateries Astrid y Gaston in Spain, Chile and Colombia, and the more casual La Mar in Mexico City and Panama.
And now Acurio is coming to the U.S.

"If you can sell a hamburger in Peru, why can't you sell ceviche in the U.S.?" he says of his nation's classic dish of refreshingly raw fish.

Acurio, 40, is convinced Peruvian food could, and should, be as popular as Japanese or Thai food, and that it belongs on every street corner and built into every strip mall in the U.S.

Next month, he takes the first steps in that direction, launching a branch of his La Mar restaurant in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district, with more planned for Las Vegas, New York and Miami.

Then, in a sort of culinary reverse-colonization, Acurio hopes to inundate the U.S. and European markets with his many brands, from a mall-friendly stuffed potato franchise to microwavable Peruvian favorites and seasonings for grocers.

Acurio acknowledges his plans are ambitious but he says investors have been eager to back his projects, and that the La Mar locations slated to open in the U.S. already have financing.

Of course, winning over investors and winning over the American palate are entirely different games.

Success, he thinks, will hinge on finding the elements of Peruvian cuisine Americans already embrace from other cultures. And given the popularity of sushi, Acurio is gambling on ceviche, the main plate of the La Mar franchise.

It's a plan that some in the food world think might just work.

"If you're going to peg Peruvian food's success to one dish, ceviche isn't a bad dish to do it with," says Kate Krader, restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine. "Americans have already shown themselves to be head-over-heels in love with sushi, tuna tartar and other types of raw fish dishes."

There's also a benefit to being unique, says Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious.com. "There's not a top-notch Peruvian restaurant in America right now, so I think there's room for one," she says.

Acurio's plans for a line of Peruvian sauces, spices and snacks - including a ceviche marinade - however, might be a harder sell among American home cooks unaccustomed to preparing raw fish, says Steel.

But for Acurio, cracking the American market is more than a business challenge. It's also a personal mission to earn what he considers long overdue culinary credibility for Peru.

"Our work is to make the Peruvian gastronomic heritage - that we've always had - become recognized everywhere," he says. "And the only way to do that is by opening restaurants throughout the world."

And that's all part of a dream that began when Acurio was a boy, a dream that didn't mesh with his father's plans.

"He wanted me to be president," Acurio says with a laugh. After two years of law school in Madrid, Spain, Acurio dropped out to enroll at the city's restaurant school. From there he went on to study - and meet his wife, Astrid - in Paris.

Cooking in Europe taught him the power of innovation, how to respect a traditional cuisine while also reinterpreting it. It was a skill that served him well when he returned to Peru to draw inspiration from the foods of his childhood.

The result was Astrid y Gaston, his first restaurant, a contemporary-Andean restaurant Acurio and his wife opened in Lima in 1994.

Many of his dishes are Peruvian classics, including lomo saltado and tacu tacu, a lightly fried, chunky mash of Andean beans and rice.

And, of course, there is the showcase seafood that has propelled Acurio to fame, including tiradito - a sort of Peruvian take on sashimi. One of Acurio's signature tiradito is a plate of chilled, raw sardines splashed with a tangy yellow chili sauce.

Chupe de camarones, another favorite, is a creamy tomato and river crawfish stew accompanied by a poached egg and buttered toast. It's his own take on his family's recipe.

"What we cook is what we lived, what we taste," he said.

And soon, he hopes, Americans will develop a taste for that life.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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