One of our favorite things to do when we travel is eat local cuisine. When we planned a trip to Lima, Peru, we knew this city would be focused around food (since Lima is known as the food capital of South America). We booked a food tour with Exquisito Peru (ultimate Barranco food tour) and it couldn’t have been a better, and tastier, experience.
We started off our tour meeting our guide, Xiema, in the Barranco neighborhood after Exquisitio Peru picked us up from our hotel. This neighborhood is BEAUTIFUL, and known for it’s incredible street art. We ended up coming back a few times before leaving Lima.
The first stop was Cafe Negro. The cutest spot for coffee and avocado toast. It was hidden within a food market and if it wasn’t for this tour, we would have never found it! Here we had our breakfast portion of the food tour: Peruvian coffee, lucama juice (lucama is a superfood fruit. The juice had the consistency of pancake batter – it was delicious!) and avocado toast with cheese.
Next, Xiema took us further into the market to a local fruit stand. Peru has so many fruits that we don’t have here in North America so it was exciting to try new things. Sweet granadilla was one of my favorites. It felt like a plastic ball that you smash it with your fingers to break it. Inside there are seeds in juice that you eat with a spoon. It was so tasty!
After leaving the market, Xiema guided us through the neighborhood to the COOLEST little Peruvian chocolate shop, El Cacaotal. Amanda was the store owner and is actually from New Jersey! She studied chocolate in Peru and in my opinion has the best job in the world. I never knew how good Peruvian chocolate was and from what we learned, the rise of Peruvian chocolate is pretty recent. We were able to try award wining chocolate (we literally triedthe best chocolate in the world), learn to peel and crush cocoa beans and how to properly taste chocolate. This was one of my favorite stops for sure!
On our next stop we started our lunch at Awicha Restaurante. This beautiful gem in Barranco had the best atmosphere and even better food. Our first dish was causa which ended up being my favorite Peruvian dish! It is potato based and can be filled with anything. Ours was filled with chicken and we savored every bite.
Next, the chef made ceviche table side for us so we could see exactly how its done. We even saw the whole fish that it came from (wishing we had fish like this in Chicago).
Lunch didn’t stop there on our tour. After leaving Awicha, Xiema took us down the street to Juanito, an amazing local bar and restaurant, to have pisco sours (by far the best we had in Lima!) and lomo saltado, one of the best dishes in Peru!
Our final stop was of course, ice cream. We each got two scoops even though we were already so full. It was just too good to not finish everything in this tour!
We can honestly say that out of any city we’ve ever visited, Lima wins our award for the best food overall. This tour definitely showcased the best food in Lima. To book the tour we did click HERE.
Emilie & Chris
*this post is sponsored by Exquisito Peru but all thoughts and opinions are our own*
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