The best restaurants in Lima, Peru

For years largely unnoticed by food enthusiasts, Lima, the Peruvian capital, developed into one of the great gastronomic capitals of the world over the past decade that by now can easily compete with old-established gourmet cities such as New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo.

Being a melting pot of cultures and traditions, flavors and colors from all over the globe, the capital of Peru is home to a new generation of creative young chefs that combine their Peruvian roots and the knowledge of their training from some of the top culinary schools around the globe with the wide and diverse variety of the available local natural resources.

By creating unique, new and fresh, but still traditional and typical Peruvian dishes, these chefs redefined the local cuisine making Lima a Mecca for food lovers with a huge number of excellent restaurants.

The 12 best restaurants in Lima

CNN Travel just recentely published a list with the 12 best restaurants Lima has to offer. Have a look at them and enjoy dining there:

• Central (Santa Isabel 376, Miraflores, Lima): Owned by one of the best Peruvian chefs Virgilio Martínez, Central is Latin America N° 1 restaurant for years already and can be found on San Pellegrino's ranking of “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017” on position 5. Martínez, “the groundbreaking chef taking Peruvian food to new heights” is known for for being passionate about investigating Peru’s biodiversity and ancient produce, and then integrating the little-known indigenous Peruvian ingredients from the country’s coastal region, the Andes and the Amazon rainforest into his fresh and contemporary dishes.
• Maido (Calle San Martin 399, Miraflores, Lima): The flagship restaurant of Lima-born Peruvian Nikkei chef Mitsuharu ‘Micha’ Tsumura offers a colorful journey through Peruvian-Japanese cuisine. Placed 8th on the list of “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017”, Maido is the N° 2 in Latin America.
• Astrid & Gastón (Av. Paz Soldan 290, San Isidro, Lima): Gastón Acurio was the first Peruvian chef that actively promoted Peruvian cuisine, ingredients, history and heritage around the globe. He is famous for his contemporary Peruvian cuisine that honors ancestry and tradition. His restaurant Astrid y Gastón, housed in a beautifully 17th century mansion decorated in modern, minimalist style, could reach position 33 on the list of “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017”.
• La Mar (Av Mariscal La Mar 770, Miraflores, Lima): Chef Gastón’s second flagship restaurant in Lima surely is one of the best place in town to enjoy Peru’s national dish ceviche and a wide variety of other Peruvian fish and seafood dishes.
• Malabar (Av. Camino Real 101, San Isidro, Lima): Even though highly rated chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino repeatedly stated to just offer "casual cuisine, with a simple spirit and the warmth of home", his creations are spectacular using mostly exotic ingredients from the Amazon. Have an aperitif before your meal at Malabar’s bar which ranks among the top 10 in the world.
• Amaz (Av. la Paz 1079, Miraflores, Lima): Chef Schiaffino's second restaurant is as well explicitly dedicated to recipes and ingredients from the Amazon basin bringing staple foods of the Peruvian rainforest to new heights.
• Rafael (Calle San Martin 300, Miraflores, Lima): Chef Rafael Osterling, former lawyer and now one of Peru’s culinary stars, explores the diverse culinary heritage of the country, fusing traditional native ingredients with Italian, Asian and Nikkei influences. The restaurant is located in a lovely Art Deco townhouse.
• Chez Wong (Ca. Enrique León García 114, Urb. Santa Catalina, La Victoria, Lima): Far away from the fancy restaurants in Lima’s districts Miraflores and San Isidro, at first glance Chez Wong is nothing more than a small eatery in someone’s house in a working class neighborhood. But don’t be fooled. Here you most probably find the best, most delicious and freshest ceviche and other seafood dishes prepared by the master chef Javier Wong himself. There’s no menu and every dish is unique. Lunch-only; reservation essential.
• La Picanteria (Calle Santa Rosa 388, Surquillo, Lima): Chef Hector Solís focuses in its lunch-only casual restaurant on the food of the northern Peruvian coast and here especially on fish which is sold by weight and served in different preparations to your liking
• Osso (Calle Tahiti 175, La Molina and Av. Sto. Toribio 173, San Isidro, Lima): Probably the least authentic Peruvian restaurant, but surely the best place in South America for steak, chef Renzo Garibaldi offers in his butcher shop and restaurant Osso the best cuts, from perfectly cooked ribeye to flavored sausages fresh from the grillmaster’s BBQ.
• 1087 Bistro (Av. Los Conquistadores 1087, San Isidro, Lima): Chef Palmiro Ocampo reinvents and interprets traditional Peruvian dishes creating experimental and elaborate pleasures with surprising names such as Trepanation, the cranial surgeries once practiced by the Paracas people along the southern coast or Trueque, a reference to the pre-Colombian tradition of barter that still survives in rural Peru.
• El Señorio del Sulco (El Malecón Cisneros 1470, Miraflores, Lima): Culinary historian and cookbook author Isabel Alvarez and her son chef Flavio Solórzano offer pre-Colombian and traditional Peruvian criolla classics at the ultimate location on the Miraflores malecon overflooking the Pacific Ocean.