Encountering Asian faces in Lima can take an unprepared visitor by surprise.
A sushi chef with Japanese features explains his technique in flawless Spanish.
[Speaking Spanish]
[Narrator] On the streets of Lima’s Barrio Chino, or Chinatown, elderly Chinese gentlemen gather
to discuss politics or the events of the day, just as they might in Canton or Beijing.
The multicultural stew that is modern Peru gets much of its spice from two waves of immigration....
...The Chinese in the mid 19th century, and the Japanese at the turn of the 20th century.
These two immigrant groups have put down roots,
and their descendants are fully integrated into Peruvian life.
But at the table and in markets, such as Lima’s Central Market,
the Asian impact is hard to miss.
[Tour Guide] In this area, you're going to see some of the Chinese and Japanese vegetables....
....that you can find all around the market here, because of the [....] of the migration that we talk so much about.
Peru had a lot of Japanese and Chinese origins and cultures and people....
but here in the market, they are all integrated. You can see there's a....
This is Chinese.
And this is our Latin equivalent.
And, uh....
You have the ginger, here.
It was used on a lot of Peruvian dishes, as well as Chinese and Japanese dishes, too.
This is type of a potato, I show you, aJapanese type of potato.
And this is a type of Japanese yucca.
[Narrator] In the quarter century after 1849,
an estimated 100,000 Chinese came to Peru to work on coastal cotton and sugar plantations.
In Lima, they established one of the first Chinatowns in the Western Hemisphere.
Today, Peru boasts more than 2,000 Chinese restaurants, known as chifas,
and many of the best can be found in Lima’s lively Barrio Chino.
[Tour Guide] This is Lima Chinatown and here in Peru, this is the largest Chinese community
because they say that, more or less, more than ten percent of the population has a Chinese flat.
[Narrator] The scenes in the Barrio Chino markets are familiar to Chinatown shoppers everywhere:
crisp-skinned roast ducks and plump chickenswith their feet still attached,
the way Chinese cooks like them;
whole fish, perfect for steaming with ginger, soy sauce and scallions;
and skeins of fresh egg noodles for soups and stir-fries.
But among the bok choy and bitter melon are ingredients little known in Taipei or New York’s Chinatown....
such as choclo, the large-kerneled white corn served with ceviche;
and tropical fruits like cherimoya.
Even the shopping music places this market a long way from Asia.
[Peruvian Music playing]
After all that shopping, it’s time to eat.
At Lima’s Wa Lok restaurant, customers dine family-style on chef Alan Chang’s refined Cantonese cooking.
But Peruvian touches abound.
The steamed spareribs in black bean sauce are topped with aji amarillo,
the fragrant Peruvian yellow pepper,
and the leaf-wrapped sticky rice, a favorite in dim sum restaurants everywhere,
is known here as a Chinese tamal.
Let’s go behind the scenes at Wa Lok, to watch the cooks filling and pleating the dumplings
that are the pride of every good dim sum establishment.
Those agile fingers come from years of practice.
Here chefs work with the finest fish and shellfish from Peruvian waters,
transforming them with astonishing Cantonese techniques.
A carefully scored fish gets a thorough dusting with cornstarch and a quick bath in hot oil....
What emerges is a delightful edible blossom, whose tasty finishing touch
is a Cantonese sweet and sour sauce.
It may seem curious to travel to Peru to eat Chinese food,
but the country’s Chifa restaurants merit a visit.
Equally surprising to many travelers, Peru’s Japanese restaurants rank among the best in the world.
The country’s many Japanese immigrants and their descendants have, over the decades,
developed a culinary style known as Nikkei cuisine,
which merges traditional Japanese techniques with Peruvian ingredients.
In Lima, Toshiro Konishi of Toshiro’s Sushi Bar is an artist whose medium is seafood.
[Japanese Music Playing]
To some observers, Humberto Sato and his Lima restaurant, Costanera 700,
are the ultimate exemplars of Nikkei cooking.
The son of Japanese immigrants, Humberto credits his parents for his minimalist cooking style.
“If the ingredients are great,” says Humberto, “everything else is simple.”
His restaurant is the ideal place to try lomo saltado,
a fusion dish as beloved in Lima as steak frites are in Paris.
The invention, no doubt, of a Chinese immigrant chef, a proper lomo saltado
relies on expert stir-fry technique to marry beef,
Asian soy sauce and Asian-style steamed rice
with Peruvian potatoes, tomatoes and ajis.
Humberto’s son Yaquir works with him at Costanera 700,
perpetuating the flavors of the Nikkei kitchen.
Yaquir’s high regard for fish and his flawless knife skills
reflect his Japanese heritage.