Food, Wine and Travel ... With Recipes: TableConversation.com

A Visit to Valpo

This is really scary. I can see through cracks in the floor boards to the steeply pitched rails beneath the little car in which I am riding. What if it should cut loose, plunge off the side or hurtle me to the bottom?

Ahhh. It reaches the top, the door opens, and I head out for a magnificent view of the harbor of Valparaiso, once Chile’s greatest port.

The harbor looks busy, but its heyday was long ago.  The opening of the Panama Canal put an end to the long voyage around the tip of South America, diverting ships far north of Valparaiso.

Although named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this historic and picturesque city plays second fiddle to glamorous Vina del Mar next door. Tour groups go there for lunch after catching a few highlights of Valpo.

In order to see more, I have avoided the tours and taken an early morning bus from Santiago. My goal is to ride the historic ascensores (funiculars) that climb the dramatic hills upon which the city is built.

Constructed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ascensores are lovingly tended and, I presume, safe. More than a dozen still operate. The one I’ve just ridden goes up Cerro Artilleria (cerro means hill).

At the top, stalls sell tourist trinkets. A single restaurant has posted its lunch menu. And history buffs hike further to the Museo Naval y Maritimo (naval and maritime museum).

Another 250 pesos takes me down, and I board a bus to Ascensor Concepcion. “Tell the driver you want to go to Turri,” advises a woman at the bus stop, because that is the local name. This hill seems even steeper, but the trip is mercifully short.

Cerro Concepcion offers a cluster of inns, restaurants and cafes and a long walkway with benches where one can relax and enjoy the view. Still, I have been warned not to wander heedlessly, and I avoid an empty street where I see an individual I don’t trust.

Other tourists tell me that residents have directed them away from questionable areas and advised them to keep cameras hidden. Down below, I skirted two drunks as I headed toward a bus stop.

Downtown seems run down, and the houses that I have seen in the hills look flimsy and weathered, like homes perched above the ravines in Tijuana.

For lunch, I go to Café Turri on Cerro Concepcion, near the funicular terminal. This restaurant is in another world from what I have seen.  Modern, airy and upscale, it could well be on a hill in San Francisco or in an exclusive part of Santa Barbara.

View windows look out to a broad terrace and the sea beyond, but it is too cold to sit outside, although other tourists clamor for these tables.

Lunch is elegant. Fish (reineta) has a creamy seafood sauce that incorporates oysters, shrimp, mussels and razor clams. The potato gratin that the waiter suggests is just right with this.

I ask for a red wine, and he brings De Martino Legada Reserva Carmenere 2006 from the Maipo Valley.

Dessert is a Chilean classic, mote con huesillo, or cooked wheat with whole preserved peaches. In this upscale rendition, it becomes Vanidad Porteno (portenos are inhabitants of this port city) and is paired with a glass of late harvest wine, Casa Silva Semillon Gewurztraminer 2006 from the Colchagua Valley.

Another 250 pesos, and I am back down, map in hand, walking to an ascensor nearby.  But I get lost in the warren of twisting streets and never find it. Instead, I come across an artisanal fair and buy a jar of merquen, a spicy red pepper seasoning that originated with the indigenous Mapuches of the south.

Another booth has chumbeque, a traditional sweet from Iquique made of  flaky cookies blended with  lime juice and cane syrup. And another has fancy handmade chocolates.

Continuing on, I see grand, faded, European style buildings from Valparaiso’s glory days. A market street is congested—produce stalls, bakeries, empanada shops and a woman nodding in a chair beside a table of goods for sale.

Farther on is a line of stalls aimed at local trade, piled with alpaca scarves and caps for the cold weather to come, cheap jewelry, snacks and, although it is May (autumn in Chile), nativity scenes from Peru.

A bus takes me on a swirling ride around the hills, passing a sign for La Sebastiana, the house of the poet Pablo Neruda, which is now a museum. 

I visited the house on a previous trip, so I don’t get off. On that trip, I stopped only long enough to see La Sebastiana and to have a quick coffee at a famous café of the past, Café Riquet (now closed). One of its customers was the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, or so a taxi driver told me. Pinochet was born in Valparaiso.

This time, instead of rushing in and out, I have wandered for many hours. Walking to the bus stop, I pass a pet food shop with hungry mutts clustered outside, modest lunch rooms and a bakery where frosting flows over cakes like folds of fabric.

Near the Parque Italia, a tree-lined square, I see a lively stall that sells obleas colombianas, and I buy one for the trip home. The tissue-thin wafers (obleas) are put together with arequipa, which is luscious, soft, Colombian style milk caramel.  It is a sweet finish to an interesting day, and in only an hour and a half, I am back in Santiago.

Touring Valparaiso.

Tur-Bus goes every 15 minutes from Santiago to Valparaiso. Buses are comfortable and seats are reserved. The ticket office in Santiago is inside the Universidad de Santiago Metro terminal.  A round trip ticket costs about $8.

The O microbus will take you around the hills of Valparaiso, affording good views of the harbor if you sit on the right. Board this bus on Francia just past Colon, above Parque Italia.

Ascensor rides are 250 pesos each way. Go armed with a map, a guidebook and enough Spanish to ask directions.   

A Fun Place to Eat Fish

Going to Donde Augusto is like stepping into a carnival where raucous  barkers try to collar you for every sort of attraction.

This restaurant is in Santiago’s Mercado Central, which houses a lively fish market, an abundance of cafes, produce displays, spice sellers and much more.

The building alone is worth the trip for architecture buffs. They can inspect an airy wought iron superstructure that dates from the 19th century.

Inside, prospective customers face a barrage of invitations to buy. It would be nice to take home some of this glorious seafood—fresh scallops on the half shell, mussels, oysters, clams and fish such as corvina and dorado. But we kitchenless travelers can only admire, then head for one of the cafes to eat our fill.

Donde Augusto is the best known and most touristy, but I always eat there, because it has a balcony, from which I can look down on strolling musicians, families assembling at tables on the ground floor, waiters juggling trays of food, colorful heaps of fruits and vegetables, and a nonstop swirl of shoppers.

I always start with the same dish—locos with mayonnaise and potato salad. Locos are often confused with abalone, so it seems like a bargain when you get two thick, tender, sweet chunks of this pale shellfish for about $15.

However, locos are totally different. They are carnivores, whereas abalones are herbivores. Wild harvested deep off the coasts of Chile and Peru, where they cling to rocks and subsist on sea life, they consist of a single shell with tempting, delicious flesh.

Waiting for the locos, I have a pisco sour, the most popular drink in Chile as well as in Peru. The waiter, who is Chilean, confesses that he thinks pisco sours are tastier in Peru, but this one is good enough for me.

To accompany the cocktail, there are salty, flat,  glazed rolls called hallullas and fresh salsa, the pebre to which Chileans are addicted.

The locos plate is a good advertisement for Chilean produce as well as seafood.  The butter lettuce leaves are springy and super fresh. So is the tomato slice. And the potato salad is light and well made, dressed with the same intensely yellow mayonnaise as the locos.

When seafood is this good, I can’t stop at one dish, and so I order machas parmesana—razor clams on the half shell with creamy Parmesan topping. Twelve half shells seem a lot, but they are gone in a flash.

For dessert, I want something cool and refreshing, like helado de chirimoya—cherimoya ice cream. Marbled with orange sherbet, the ice cream is a good choice, and I spoon it up slowly so that I can spend a few more moments drinking in the vibrant scene below.

Donde Augusto, Mercado Central Local 66/166, Santiago, Chile. Tel: (56-2) 672-2829. To get there, take Line 2 of the Metro to Puente Cal y Canto. As you emerge from the terminal, you will face the large building that houses the Mercado.

 

Cazuela for the Soul

It is raining in Santiago, and I am coming down with a cold. What I need for dinner is chicken soup. And there is one restaurant that I am sure will have it.

So I head for Galindo, which is known for such typical Chilean dishes as cazuela, a hearty meat and vegetable soup.

Galindo is in Barrio Bellavista, a bohemian, trendy, touristy neighborhood. It is near my hotel, and I walk there despite the gusts of wind that make my umbrella useless.

Ah good, one of the dishes listed on the board outside is cazuela de ave—chicken soup.

Inside, the restaurant is crowded, but a table by the window is free, and it is a nice spot, where I can look out on lamp light flickering in the trees that line the dark street.

Everyone else is looking at me, or so I think until I discover that a soccer game is in full swing on the TV set over my head.

I order a pisco sour, because the lime juice in the drink should help get rid of the cold. The cazuela arrives in a brown pottery bowl. It is magnificent, a very fresh, tender chicken leg surrounded by chunks of corn, yellow squash, potato and rice in delicious broth. The long green strands over the top are green beans.

(Unfortunately, all this goodness doesn't come through in my photo. Perhaps the camera was not at its best  that night either.) 

The waiter provides a plate so that I can lift the chicken out and cut the meat from the bones more easily than in a sloshing soup bowl. I put the chunks back and stir in a spoonful of pebre, a zesty Chilean salsa, to make the soup even more flavorful.

All is well until I experience a breathless, choking sensation. It isn’t the cold but smoke drifting from the tables around me. Then I see a sign that says the room is a “zona de fumadores” (smoking zone).  When I ask to move to the no-smoking section, I learn there is none. The entire restaurant is a tobacco zone.

Except for the unwelcome fumes, I’ve had a good dinner, though. And I walk out into the cool, fresh, rain-washed night air, smoke-free and feeling much better.

Galindo, Dardinac 098, Barrio Bellavista, Santiago, Chile. Tel: (56-2) 777-0116.

Coffee and Kuchen in Chile

A fascinating part of Chile’s history is the arrival of German settlers in the second half of the 19th century.

They came at the invitation of the Chilean government and settled in the far south, which then became a center of German culture

The newcomers introduced beer, sausages, breads and delicious pastries, one of which met with such wide acceptance that it crossed over into Chilean cuisine.

Kuchen (cake) is the only German food word that has been adopted without alteration by Chileans. You don’t have to seek out German restaurants or go south to find it. Cafes anywhere may have it, just as scones and Danish turn up at coffee shops in the United States.

The most common is apple kuchen, topped with a lattice crust, a glaze or migas, a crumb mixture similar to streusel.

When I walked into Café El Observatorio in Santiago one morning, I found on the menu “kuchen de manzanas con miga streusel” (apple cake topped with crumbs), identified as a “receta alemana” (German recipe).

A slice with coffee was perfect for a mid-morning break, just as German housewives might have served it. Juicy diced apples with a scattering of raisins sat on a tender crust under a layer of sugary crumbs, not the nut streusel that is common in the United States.

Interestingly, Barrio Lastarria, where Café El Observatorio is located, dates its earliest construction to about the same time the Germans set sail for Chile.

Quietly bohemian and seriously cultural, the barrio is populated with artisan shops, fashion boutiques,  antiquarian bookstores, interesting restaurants, cafes, bars and the like.

Café El Observatorio occupies a corner of a century-old house that functions as a cultural center.  It  is peaceful to sit there overlooking the tree-lined main street, Jose Victorino Lastarria, which was named for a 19th center intellectual, revolutionary and political figure.

The café also has a nut kuchen with caramel that I haven't yet tasted, so I’ll be back for sure next trip.

Café El Observatorio, Villavicencio 395, corner Jose Victorino Lastarria. Tel: (56-2) 632-4588. Open 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Deja Vu at Liguria in Santiago

I feel a twinge of familiarity as I walk into Liguria in Santiago.  And a little confusion.

I left Buenos Aires less than two days before, but I seem to be there again. Carlos Gardel is singing tango. And the bar looks like any respectable café in Buenos Aires, comfortable, convivial, a bit antique.

Opening off the bar is a dining room decorated with vintage signs. A wildly-colored mural covers the wall at one end of the room. At the bottom, a sign says “tangos, cuecas.” And the tango beat goes on.

The menu offers dishes that are common in Buenos Aires (grilled meats, provoleta), but also  traditional Chilean food, and I order arrollado huaso, a pork roll named for the Chilean cowboy.

This is certainly cowboy fare, meaty and heavy. The marinated pork has been rolled tightly, wrapped in pigskin and simmered in water and wine. It comes with delicious fried potatoes sprinkled with merquen, a hot red pepper seasoning from southern Chile.

My companion has beef cazuela, which is just as hearty. The large bowl contains a dense chunk of beef along with a whole potato, corn cob chunks,  squash, green beans and rice, submerged in broth. A large, pale chile stretches across the top.

The red-checked tablecloths and rustic setting seem just right for dishes like these.

Neither one of us can finish, because we started with a platter of melted goat cheese and arugula that was too good not to finish. Chilean goat cheese is mild, mellow and creamy, not strong like the goat cheeses I am accustomed to at home.

Our bread basket includes golden sopaipaillas, made with pumpkin. In Chile these are eaten along with meals or as a dessert, with syrup.

The wine we select is El Bosque Winemaker’s Choice Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 from Vina Casablanca. I like the label, which shows a tree bent by the wind.

Unwisely, we order two desserts. One is  leche asada, a custard baked in caramel.  It has been cut in a square and topped with an orange slice, which imparts a lovely, delicate flavor.

I eat so much that I can’t manage more than a forkful of a luscious tres leches cake, billowing with meringue. Only a huaso-style  appetite could have handled that.   

Liguria Bar-Restaurant, Providencia 1373, Santiago, Chile. Tel: (56-2) 235-7914.

Astrid & Gaston: Chile's Finest

Three trips to Lima, Peru, and not once did I eat at Astrid & Gaston, the trend setting restaurant founded there by star chef Gaston Acurio.

Now, finally, I have eaten at Astrid & Gaston. Not in Lima, but in Santiago, Chile, where the first A&G outside Peru was opened in September, 2000.

The timing was perfect. Astrid & Gaston has just been named the best restaurant in Chile by the Guia Culinary 2008, based on a survey of restaurant goers.

The restaurant was honored for its varied and elegant menu, which focuses on authentic Peruvian flavors. Its dessert menu won first place in that category.

It follows that my four-hour tasting lunch was brilliant. Course after course of exquisite seafood. Peruvian standards such as tiradito, ceviche and causa rethought with Acurio’s vision. Wines matched to each course from a selection of 360 labels, large enough to require two sommeliers.

What stood out? Everything, starting with a pisco sour made with aguaymanto, a berry-sized orange Peruvian fruit that is available only three months of the year in Chile, where it is known as physallis. The flavor was as sunny and tropical as the color of the fruit.

No time to finish the drink, good as it was, because I was handed a glass of Vina Valdivieso extra brut sparkling wine to accompany the first course, tiradito, which is the Peruvian equivalent of sashimi.

The cancha (roasted corn) on top of the fish was the same cancha that restaurants in Peru set out for snacking. The fish was lenguado (sole) in a bright yellow chile sauce that swirled around circles of green herb oil.  The tiny red bits scattered over the sauce were rocoto chile.

Peruvian ingredients are easy to get in Santiago, which has at least 50 Peruvian restaurants, including several I could walk to from my hotel.  Peruvian corn, potatoes, herbs such as huacatay and flame-colored rocoto chiles are available fresh, so there’s no need to alter dishes to make up for missing ingredients.

Acurio trains his chefs in Peru and manufactures eight sauce bases there to distribute to the restaurants. There are other Astrid & Gastons in Madrid, Caracas, Bogota, Quito and Panama, and one will open soon in Mexico City.

The chef in Santiago is Oscar Gomez from Ayacucho, Peru. For ceviche, Gomez stacked marinated octopus, shrimp, calamari and corvina, working in tastes of traditional ceviche garnishes such as red onion, giant corn kernels, rocoto strands and a slice of pale sweet potato.

The wine was Vina Casablanca Nimbus Sauvignon Blanc 2007 from a cool valley that is noted for whites.

What a shame that more Chilean wines aren’t available in the United States, because they are wonderful, like the Anakena Viognier 2006 from the Rapel Valley that came with the next dish, causa de atun.

Traditional causa stacks layers of  bright yellow mashed potatoes with seafood or chicken and avocado. This version played with that concept, employing an appetizer portion of lime-flavored yellow potatoes as the base for tastes of smoked trout marinated with dill and raw tuna from Easter Island.

Never have I tasted pasta so perfectly cooked as that for the next course, a crab shell filled with bucatini a la huancaina. Bouncy yet tender, the pasta was seasoned with a shellfish reduction and huacatay. and coated with spicy yellow ocopa sauce.

Ocopa is a creamy mixture that includes milk, cheese and aji amarillo (yellow chile). A grilled crab leg came on the side, and more crab was mixed with the pasta.

The wine was Alto Vuelo Pinot Noir 2007 from William Cole Vineyards in the Casablanca Valley.

Another red, Terra Noble’s Gran Reserva Merlot 2005, came with sudado de pescado, a winter fish stew appropriate for May’s cool fall weather. The fish was corvina (sea bass) cooked with tomatoes, corn, garlic, cilantro and yellow chile in a vibrant orange sauce.

Departing from seafood for a moment, I ate arroz con pato--crisp duck leg with northern style savory green rice. Then back to seafood with quinoa chupe.

In Peru, chupe is like chowder. In Chile it is dry, not soupy. This version included picoroco, a crustacean that attaches to rocks like a barnacle, as well as shrimp, clams, scallops and oysters.

The wine for both these dishes was Chile’s signature Carmenere, an Amplus One 2004 from Santa Ema. If my suitcase hadn’t been overstuffed, I would have hunted down a bottle to bring home.

And at last, dessert—a stemmed glass containing a soft mound of white chocolate blended with cream cheese, surrounded by orange chile sorbet and a compote of pineapple cubes and aguaymanto marinated in pisco.

Instead of a Chilean wine, Taylor’s 10-year-old tawny Port accompanied the sweets, including a final plate that contained a delectable taste of chocolate soufflé, a slice of cooked banana topped with a rocoto strip, a packet of filo dough filled with banana paste, and two ice creams, one flavored with banana, the other with nothing more than rich cream.

Is it any wonder that afterward I walked the equivalent of three subway stops to my hotel?

Good news for Californians: I learned from Alejandro Hartmann, who directs Astrid & Gaston in Santiago, that Acurio will soon open a restaurant in San Francisco modeled on the seafood restaurant La Mar in Lima.

Personally, I wish La Mar were coming to  Los Angeles. After one taste of Acurio’s food, I want more, much more.

The Photos:

From the top, diners at Astrid $ Gaston; aguaymanto pisco sour; tiradito; ceviche; causa; bucatini; chupe; the dessert cup; an exterior view of the restaurant.

Astrid & Gaston, Antonio Bellet 201, Providencia, Santiago, Chile. Tel: (56-2) 650-9125.  The tasting lunch is about $60 and must be ordered by everyone at the table. Wines are additional.

The Corner You Ought to Know

Black slaves came to Peru with the first Spanish explorers, and their numbers grew as wealthy Spaniards took up a luxurious way of life in the new colony.

The slaves were excellent cooks and contributed substantially to Peru’s unique Creole cuisine. Blacks are still regarded as among the country’s finest cooks, which is a good reason to go to a restaurant in Lima called El Rincon que no Conoces.

The proprietor is a black woman, Teresa Izquierdo Gonzales. In 1978, Izquierdo opened a modest sweet shop. As she added more substantial fare, the sweet shop expanded into a restaurant. Today, it is a top destination for Creole cuisine.

The name means “the corner you don’t know.”  But the restaurant, which is located in the district of Lince, is far from unknown. On Wednesdays, when a Creole buffet replaces the regular menu, the tables are full. 

As you enter, the restaurant appears deserted. Stairs at the back lead to the airy second-floor room where the buffet takes place.

The first time I went, friends introduced me to Izquierdo, a portly woman who walks with a cane. That day, the food, served from heavy earthen pots, included olluquito (an Andean potato) with dried llama meat; cilantro rice with duck breast; fish escabeche with panca chile sauce; stuffed peppers and potatoes; yellow chiles filled with tuna; carapulca, which is a combination of dried potatoes, pork and chicken; frejoles, spelled with an initial e in Peru, and many other dishes.

Unfortunately, I was under the weather that day and could eat only with my eyes. The next time, I made up for that with plate after plate of delicious food.

Highlights included ocopa (potato) with a sauce of peanuts, chile, and a mint-like herb called huacatay; a stuffed red rocoto pepper; marinated pig’s feet, dried potatoes with an interesting smoky taste; turkey pipian with rice; the beef dish seco de carne, the traditional chicken dish, aji de gallina; spicy tacu tacu, which is a combination of beans and rice browned in a skillet, and creamy canario beans spiked with chile.

The starters included causa looking like a jellyroll dressed up for a party. The yellow “cake” layer composed of mashed potatoes enclosed chicken filling.

As I sat down, I was brought a plate of what I thought were two small dinner rolls. These turned out to be light, tender empanadas filled with beef.

A pisco sour comes with the buffet, and you can order additional drinks such as cinnamon-scented chicha morada, the  purple corn drink, which goes well with highly seasoned food.

El Rincon’s desserts include rice pudding, mazamorra morada, which is a sweet, purple corn porridge, and suspiro de limena, topped with meringue as thick and rich as the pudding beneath it.   

These are excellent, but the one not to miss is picaron, a bunuelo-like deep-fried pastry  accompanied by  rich, dark syrup made with chancaca, which is unrefined sugar. Although the yeast dough contains squash and sweet potato, it is amazingly light.

Black cooks are known for their skill with picarones, which require deft handwork. The hole in the center has to be formed as each portion of dough is swirled into the hot oil.

If you are not in Lima on a Wednesday, go to El Rincon anyway. The regular menu offers a wide choice of Creole dishes, and there are specials each day, all cooked to Izquierdo's fine taste.

El Rincon que no Conoces, Bernardo Alcedo 363, Lince, Lima, Peru.  Tel: 471-2171.The restaurant is open for lunch only. The Creole buffet takes place each Wednesday.

All You Can Eat--and More

If I had only a couple of days in Lima and wanted to taste as great a variety of Peruvian food as possible, I would go to El Senorio de Sulco.

There, in one gigantic meal, I can eat everything from ceviche and tiradito (like sashimi) to a whole spread of Peruvian desserts, with a pisco sour thrown in and also a chicha morada, a sweet, purple corn drink with a haunting flavor of spices and fruit.

Rustic and charming, with handpainted chairs, a tile floor and gleaming, richly painted wooden chargers, the restaurant looks out toward the sea. It’s a nice place to spend a couple of hours, and if you can get through the massive buffet in that amount of time, you deserve my congratulations. I’ve never managed to try every dish.

Still, on this last trip, I  tucked away potato salad with smoked trout, ceviche composed as I watched of shrimp, scallops, squid, octopus, fish and all manner of garnishes; tender scallops presented on Chinese spoons; octopus in olive oil with olive sauce; corvina tiradito in a yellow chile sauce; cold fried fish in sweet yellow escabeche; a salad of fresh limas, broad beans, giant corn kernels  and fresh cheese; mashed potato with nutty-tasting ocopa sauce, and causa, a cold mashed potato mixture layered with chicken.  And these were only starters.

Moving along the buffet, there were Arequipa-style stuffed red peppers; lomo saltado (stir-fried beef with soy sauce and potatoes); seco de carne (beef with cilantro); charqui (jerky) cooked with a tuber called olluquito; aji de gallina (chicken in a creamy cheese and chile sauce); hot fish escabeche, and, well, you get the idea.

My favorites that day were glistening, dark, caramelized chunks of pork in algarrobina sauce (carob), and Trujillo style arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) that tasted like spicy paella.

Desserts were just as abundant. This time, I found a splendid flan moreno, a dusky flan topped with a syrupy mixture of raisins, chopped nuts and thin strips of candied orange peel. Of course I had to have a tres leches cake made with lucuma and a semifreddo of lucuma and chocolate.

Great wheels that looked like coiled tape were ponderaciones, a fried pastry accompanied by caramel-like manjar blanco. After that, I  even managed a petit four from a loaded tray, meanwhile working on marzamora, a dark, gelatinous purple pudding with fruit, and a heavenly suspiro de limena, a super sweet pudding and meringue concoction.

I should have gone away satisfied, but I’m still sad over having passed up a banana toffee semifreddo. I can’t believe I was too full to try that.

El Senorio de Sulco, Malecon Cisneros 1470, Miraflores, Lima, Peru. Tel: 441-0183. Buffet daily from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. 

A Kiss at a Tavern in Peru

I got kissed the first time I went to Antigua Taberna Queirolo. That’s what happens when people are having a jolly time, well lubricated with Peru’s grape alcohol, pisco.

Queirolo is a large pisco producer, so there is plenty on hand at  this 19th century tavern, said to be the oldest restaurant in Peru. Good bar food too. Very good. So I go there whenever I am in Lima.

About that kiss: It was quite chivalrous, delivered with a charming compliment by a gentleman at the next table who was celebrating rather enthusiastically with friends.

The tavern is charming too, a small corner of Lima’s past in a district called Pueblo Libre. Windows with old fashioned wooden bars are set high in thick walls. Ceiling fans whir when it’s warm, and vintage photos line the rooms.

Serious drinkers order pisco by the bottle along with mixers and ice. This last time, I had a chilcano de pisco, a tall drink of pisco, ginger ale, lime juice and sugar syrup.

Along with classic pisco sours, there is a masco sour made with pisco that has been macerated with Chilean plums.

The food is traditional, like the bar. I usually get a rocoto relleno, a mildly spicy red pepper stuffed with hand-cut beef, olives, raisins, hardboiled egg and melted cheese. Or I’ll have the same filling in a plump golden potato croquette—papa rellena.

There are sandwiches and also tamales, which came to Peru from Mexico. My tamal criollo contained a shred of chicken, an olive and peanut halves in a fine smooth yellow dough, with spicy marinated red onions on the side.

The tavern is at one corner of a large building that houses Queirolo offices and a sales counter for piscos and wines. Around the far corner is El Bolivariano, a  restaurant with a full menu, a bar and, on Sunday, a Creole buffet.

Although the menu there was tempting, all I could manage after lunch at the taberna was coffee and dessert, well, two desserts—the rich custard suspiro limena, topped with whipped cream, a cherry and a cinnamon stick, and arroz zambito, a dusky rice pudding made with chancaca, an unrefined sugar similar to Mexican piloncillo, pecans and a sprinkling of shredded coconut.

Antigua Taberna Queirolo, Avenida San Martin 1090, Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru. Tel: 460-0441.

El Bolivariano, Pasaje Santa Rosa 291, Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru. Tel: 463-6333.

Oztia: Sacred Food in Peru

I felt like getting on my knees as I walked into Oztia. According to the sign outside, this restaurant is devoted to sagrada cocina (sacred cookery). Inside, the temple was empty. Serious dining in Lima begins well after 9 p.m. And I was an hour early. That meant plenty of attention as I pondered what to order.

The pisco sour was definitely profane, made with coca leaves steeped in pisco. Yes, the very same leaves that are processed for cocaine. Not to worry. Coca leaves in small quantities are quite innocent. You can even buy coca leaf teabags at supermarkets in Lima.

At any rate, the leaves gave a faint herbal flavor to the pisco sour, making it the most interesting version that I had this trip.

While I sipped, the waiter brought a plate artfully drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, splashed with balsamic vinegar and ornamented with a red pool of tiny sauco fruit (elderberries) to go with my bread.

Next came cubes of ricotta wrapped in grilled eggplant slices with a red pepper sauce. And I hadn’t even ordered yet.

I decided on a fusion dish, langostinos (large shrimp), in a mango curry sauce braised in mint oil and accompanied by Thai rice.  I liked the shrimp very much. The sauce was slightly sweet and slighty spicy with an almost caramel flavor.

What made the rice Thai, I have no idea.  Bits of peach were mixed in, and a trace of green appeared at the bottom. That must have been the mint oil. The top was sprinkled with crisp white noodles and black sesame seeds. I have never seen anything like it in a Thai restaurant, but that’s what fusion is about.

Dessert had its own appetizer course, guargueros rellenos con manjar blanco, or tiny pastry cones filled with milk caramel and sprinkled with cocoa powder. This wasn’t fusion, but a traditional Peruvian pastry in miniature.

Then came  the holy part of the meal, lucuma tiramisu, on a plate reverently decorated with a  spider-thin cross made of powdered cinnamon.

Paola Cubas is Oztia’s chef and, it appears, a woman of faith as well as an accomplished cook.

Oztia, Bolognesi 143, Miraflores, Lima, Peru. Tel: 243-6513.