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.