The Lima (Peru) Restaurants We Love

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To say the restaurant scene of Lima can be overwhelming is an understatement.

In the past two decades or so, Lima has seen a major culinary renaissance, both in the sheer number of restaurants that have opened and in the amount of interest they’ve garnered. Saveur dates this to 2011, when Astrid y Gastón was named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, but the restaurant opened in 1994 and quickly made waves. Currently the city has three restaurants on the top 50 list, but sometimes there’s five. It’s safe to say Lima is consistently one of the world’s best food destinations (and is a fabulous place to take a food tour!).

Chef Gastón Acurio is often credited for kicking off Peru’s culinary makeover when he opened Astrid y Gastón, but other chefs quickly followed. They attended culinary schools abroad, honed their skills in the kitchens of top restaurants in Europe, North America, or Japan. And then they came home, where they could apply what they’d learned—and let loose creatively—on the traditional dishes of Peru and with the country’s stunning biodiversity at their disposal.

Peru, you see, has a pretty unique geography that travels over the Andean highlands to the Amazon jungle and down the Pacific coast. Nearly every type of ecosystem can be found here. The country’s natural riches are too numerous to count; the indigenous pantry is seemingly endless. As a visitor, you’ll learn about a new-to-you fruit, tuber, herb, or grain every single day here. And you’ll question everything you thought you knew about corn and potatoes (the latter of which Peru famously has more than 4,000 varieties).

Then there’s the cultural influences on the indigenous cuisine, most notably from 300 years of Spanish rule, the African slaves brought after the Spanish conquest, and waves from immigration from China and Japan. This has given birth to cuisines-within-cuisines in Peru, like Nikkei (i.e., Japanese Peruvian) and chifa (Chinese Peruvian), that have spread across the globe. Fusion cuisines like these seem to occur naturally in the adaptive kitchens of Peru.

So when my family and I planned a trip to Peru last summer, we didn’t know where to start. Fortunately we have Limeño friends who offered to host us and wanted to accompany us on our culinary journey. (They wanted, in fact, to show us the best of the best of Peruvian food!) They provided guidance, nudged us to make our reservations on time, and ensured we experienced a great variety of Peruvian food not only in Lima but in Cusco and the Sacred Valley as well (see box, just below). 

But we had five full days in Lima, and we intended to make the most of them. For the first time in several decades of traveling, we made reservations for lunch and for dinner every single day—it is worthwhile to plan ahead in this culinary capital. As a family of four, we spent most of our budget on food, but even the higher-end places were not nearly as pricey as restaurants of similar caliber in New York City. (We only ate a la carte, however; no tasting menus for four!) In between meals, we wandered neighborhoods, visited museums and parks, and hung out at our friends’ beautiful house. Below the jump, here’s where to eat in Lima.

For Ceviche: El Mercado

We were torn between La Mar, enthusiastically recommended to us by good NYC friends, and El Mercado for our upscale cevichería pick in Lima, but our local friends preferred El Mercado—and we were not disappointed. In fact, we loved this restaurant from the moment we walked into the airy, bustling dining room and saw its artful paper menu, with its beautiful drawings of various local fish (true story: It’s framed and hanging in our bathroom right now).

Here we had our first (excellent!) pisco sours in Lima, and our kids their first Inca Kola. We devoured a perfect ceviche de lenguado (local flounder), piled high with thin-sliced red onion; a dark-hued scallop and black clam ceviche; incredibly buttery scallops in their shell, doused with ají amarillo. The chicharrón norteño, delicately fried fish, langostines, calamari, and yuca in gluten-free potato flour, was unbelievably light.

The causa, a very traditional layered potato salad typically served cold, was given a contemporary seafood spin, with crab and egg, crisp langostine, and delicious colorful sauces to swipe it through: a purple olive crema and a bright orange aioli of rocoto, an Andean chili pepper. The picarones—fried rings of sweet potato and squash—served here in a pool of fig blossom honey with a side of cinnamon ice cream were the perfect dessert. We practically floated out of this restaurant, satiated to the gills and beyond thrilled to be in Peru. 

For a World-Class Meal: Kjolle

Perhaps you’ve heard of Central, which once held the top spot on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Helmed by chef Virgilio Martínez and his wife, chef Pía León, Central is a tasting menu-only restaurant, with prices starting around US$450 per person. Fortunately for our family, chef Pía has her own heralded restaurant (currently No. 16 on The World’s 50 Best list) on the same gorgeous grounds as Central—where we were told 66 edible flowers are grown—and it allows for a la carte dining. Which isn’t to say this is an inexpensive meal, but there’s a bit more control for diners in terms of quantity and pricing. As we were dining for lunch with our two kids (plus two friends), this was a must.

During our visit, we were among the first to enter the restaurant for lunch, and we felt immediately welcomed. The decor is rather minimalist but also inviting and tranquil, with lots of warm wood tones throughout. We knew we were in for a treat when we were given a beautiful brown loaf of bread baked with maca root, served with a mint-chile ají and the prettiest butter I’ve ever seen, topped with clay powder and purple flowers from the restaurant’s gardens. The butter was incredibly fluffy and sweetened with cabuya, a native Peruvian plant. This was the stuff bread-and-butter dreams are made of.

The parade of dishes the six of us shared ran from a textural medley of squash and crustaceans—river shrimp topped with a perfect round of creamy, buttery zapallo squash puree, with a thin, crisp disc of squash on top—and a rich pairing of duck and squid to pork belly cubes over a tuber puree with microgreens and plaice filets atop a citrusy Amazonian dressing, topped with crisp purple potatoes and a yellow turmeric foam.

The scallop ceviche was a showstopper for me: melt-in-your-mouth scallops in the freshest, brightest leche del tigre, topped with a stunning black latticework made of pacay seed and flowers. And though we tasted many foods from the tuber/potato family at this restaurant, we had to try its famous “Many Tubers” dish: gorgeous folds of charred yellow and red tubers, similar to yuca, atop a crisp little tart made of protein-rich kaniwa, spread with a creamy cheese made with yuca.

There were more beautifully executed, delicious dishes, as well as Amazonian nut ice cream and incredible cocktails—I tried one with cacao water and macambo seed, apparently a rainforest “superfood”—and well-crafted nonalcoholic drinks, which my sons enjoyed almost as much as seeing the servers fold their cloth napkins for them each time they got up to use the bathroom. All in all, an unforgettable meal.

For Pollo a la Brasa: Don Tito

Pollo a la brasa, roasted rotisserie chicken, is so simple, and found the world over—but this dish hits different in Peru, its birthplace. In fact, the chicken tastes different here: juicier (even the white meat), fresher. It’s so famous that more than 130 million chickens are consumed each year in Peru, and the third Sunday of July is Pollo a la Brasa Day. But first a little context.

We didn’t know before we got here that the dish’s origins trace back to a Swiss chicken farmer who raised chickens near Lima around 1950. He had the idea to cook free-range chickens for extra income, and he developed the method of marinating the chicken in a saltwater brine, then roasting them pierced on a spit over a slow coal-fed fire. Nowadays the marinade includes more ingredients like black beer, soy sauce, rosemary, huacatay, and pisco (according to Peru’s official tourism site).

Our local friends immediately suggested Don Tito when asked where we should try pollo a la brasa in Lima. Established in the 1980s, Don Tito has five branches in Lima; we went to the one in La Molina, and ordered one and half chickens for six of us. The chicken is beautifully golden-brown here, very well-seasoned and juicy, and served with the traditional accompaniments of creamy mayo, subtly spicy aji, salad, and French fries. Piles of fat papas fritas, to be specific. We also tried the camotes fritos, sweet potato fries, and a pitcher of the delicious chicha morada natural.

Our friends emphasized the difference between natural chicha and the industrial stuff you simply add water to, which many restaurants serve. The natural version involves boiling the purple corn, clove, cinnamon, pineapple husk, lime juice, and sugar together, then straining it. It’s a fantastic beverage to pair with the savory pollo. Don Tito, Av. Flora Tristan 434, La Molina, map

For Chifa cuisine: Chifa Titi

Thanks to the Chinese laborers who flocked to Peru in the mid-1800s, who began to combine things like wok cooking, soy sauce, and rice with local meats, vegetables, and seafood, a new fusion cuisine called chifa was born. This is Cantonese cooking adapted to the Peruvian palate. Arroz chaufa, a stir-fry of rice with leftovers from the previous day’s meals, was among the first popular chifa dishes, and it remains a staple of the cuisine, among many others (lomo saltado, a stir fry of beef, vegetables, and French fries, is another popular standard that’s on nearly every Peruvian menu in NYC).

Even today, Peruvians love their chifa food, and have their favorite spots for it. Our Limeño friends are no different, and their family’s go-to is Chifa Titi, a restaurant that’s been around for more than 60 years and has locations in San Isidro and La Molina. The teenagers in the family were visibly excited to eat at Titi!

Among the dishes we loved here off the vast menu were the excellent chaufa de pato (fried rice with duck and egg), the crispy-fried wontons with tamarind sauce, and the chicharrón de pollo, little pieces of beautifully fried chicken doused in a lemony sauce at the table. We also enjoyed the sesame oil-slicked stir-fried rice noodles with chicken, the pato asado (sliced roast duck), and the special wonton soup with chunks of duck, pork, and cabbage, which was wonderfully light and savory. Chifa Titi, Av. Javier Prado Este 1212, map

For the Peruvian classics: Isolina

This might be the restaurant most-recommended to me before I got to Peru, including from our local friends in Lima. Isolina is where you go for all the Peruvian comfort foods you might have heard of, or previously tried if you live in an area with many Peruvian restaurants like we do. It is a casual but handsome eatery, housed in a historic mansion in the pretty Barranco neighborhood. And despite being a casual place with homey food, Isolina has also previously landed on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

We sat upstairs and ordered way too much food for our family of four, but everything was fantastic. Here we tried the famous ají de gallina, a generous portion of tender shredded chicken in a creamy, nut-based yellow sauce made with ají amarillo, served with potato, boiled egg, black olives, and white rice. The papa relleno was excellent, a fat breaded potato stuffed with minced beef and raisin; the tallarines saltado, a stir-fry with steak and vegetables in a soy-based sauce over thin noodles, were light and flavorful, and demonstrating the regularity of chifa cuisine on the traditional Peru table.

The two-toned papas y choclos con Huancaína y ocopa was a study in Peru’s rich, creamy sauces: It’s just sliced potato and a pile of choclo, or large Andean corn kernels, half covered in yellow Huancaína sauce (made with cheese and ají amarillo) and half in green-hued ocopa, a similar sauce with huacatay, Peruvian black mint. Every Peruvian meal teaches us something new about a local ingredient!

We also loved the fresh colorful refrescos, or juices, on offer here, and the two traditional desserts we tried: arroz con leche and mazamorra (aka “sol y sombra,” half sun and half shade), pairing creamy rice pudding with thick purple corn pudding; and suspiro Limeño (“sigh of Lima”), a local favorite of sweet dulce de leche pudding topped with gorgeous little Port wine-perfumed meringue peaks. Isolina, two locations including Av. San Martín 101, Barranco, map

For Nikkei cuisine: Osaka

There are many more Peruvians of Chinese descent than there are of Japanese descent, but that hasn’t stopped Nikkei cuisine, Japanese Peruvian food, from becoming a distinct global entity. Like the Chinese, Japanese emigrants started arriving to Peru’s shores in the second half of the 19th century (“Nikkei,” for the record, simply refers to Japanese living outside of Japan.) As is often the case, the Japanese started combining ingredients like miso, soy sauce, ginger, and rice vinegar with Peru’s abundant local food, introducing their cooking techniques and culinary heritage.

The influence of the Japanese on Peruvian cooking can’t be understated—in fact, a case can be made that ceviche as we know it today wouldn’t exist as a Peruvian staple if it weren’t for the Japanese there (the fish used to be cooked!). But Nikkei is its own thing: not Peruvian, not Japanese, but an endlessly creative mix of both. Some of the big fine-dining names in Nikkei cuisine in Lima are Maido, which in 2025 secured the No. 1 spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and Osaka, which has locations around the globe now. Our Limeño friends regularly go to the latter, so we did too.

Our night at Osaka was our last night in Peru; we were two families totaling nine people, celebrating over a dizzying parade of dishes and excellent cocktails. I remember an incredible torched, melt-in-your-mouth Wagyu beef nigiri with tare and lime; tuna nigiri with foie gras and tare; an elegant tiradito carpassion, thin-sliced raw salmon drizzled with passionfruit honey and lime, topped with a crunchy nest of masa crocante, “crispy dough.” There were scallops with white truffle butter and lime; shrimp with roasted rocoto sauce and Grana Padano; a nigiri called “Inca” that paired tuna with smoked ají amarillo, togarashi, and crispy quinoa. An Amazonian paiche with miso-coconut butter and lime zest made a beautiful main course dish. More dishes kept coming; my notes couldn’t keep up! It was all delicious, and left me wanting to try more. Osaka, multiple locations including Av. El Polo 670, Surco, map

For Anticuchos: Grimanesa Anticucheri

Anticuchos de corazón are the quintessential Peruvian street food of skewered, marinated cow’s heart grilled over charcoal. Marinades vary, but the seasoning typically involves cumin, vinegar, garlic, and chile. Now, before we even arrived to Peru, our local friends cautioned us to avoid street food in Lima—but fortunately this street food is also available from smoky little specialty restaurants in the city too.

(To be clear, you can often find anticuchos on appetizer menus at general-hits Peruvian restaurants too, but a better, more legit experience will be had at restaurants laser-focused on this dish. Look for the flames jumping from a grill that may be outside.)

A Miraflores staple for more than half a century, Grimanesa Anticucheria checks all the boxes. Its very simple menu offers anticuchos de corazón and anticuchos de pollo (pechuga, or chicken breast), in various amounts, with potato and ají or not. It is safe to say that Grimanesa Vargas Araujo, the decorated female owner and anticuchero of this place who started out with a street cart, knows what she’s doing.

We split two skewers among us and enjoyed our meaty anticuchos, which are pleasantly chewy (the heart is a muscle, after all). The pieces of heart are sliced on the thin side and grilled close to rare; the slabs of yellow potato balance out the savory richness, and the two types of ají, one pink and salsa-like and the other from the (yellow) amarillo pepper, inject fresh, bright flavor. Grimanesa Anticucheria, Calle Ignacio Merino 466, Miraflores, map

For Pan con Chicharrón: Sangucheria El Chinito  

We initially tried a disappointing version of this popular Peruvian sandwich in Cusco. It was a wrong that needed to be righted, so our last morning in Lima required tracking a good one down. And we found it at Sanguchería El Chinito, a local chain with multiple locations that dates to 1960.

Traditionally eaten for breakfast, pan con chicharrón is a hefty sandwich of fried pork belly layered with thinly sliced camote (sweet potato), zesty pickled onions, and spicy ají. The sandwich was just as it should be at El Chinito—absolutely gigantic, tender and fatty and crisp in all the right places, a symphony of savory, tangy, and spicy flavors. We loved it. Sanguchería El Chinito, multiple locations including Av. Almte. Miguel Grau 302, Barranco, map