if you've done any traveling across south america then you know that it's almost impossible to avoid
hearing about how good peruvian food is if this is the first time you're seeing us we are nicole
and mico and we have spent the past seven months traveling around south america and when we got
to peru we decided to take it upon ourselves to answer the question is the food in peru as good
as people say it is in this video we are going to show you our experience trying 10 of peru's best
foods and along the way we are going to give them a rating of one to five llamas because llamas felt
like the most appropriate way to write peruvian food okay so first up ceviche ceviche is peru's
national dish and i swear like everyone who found out we were going to peru they were like you've
got to try the ceviche you got to try this ceviche from around the world they call it like peruvian
sushi because it is just raw seafood the one i had was like the mixto though so it had extra things
like shrimps and octopus but normally you just get chunks of seafood that's been marinating in
like a lime lemon mixture i guess that's kind of what cooks it and then there's chopped up cilantro
chopped up onions a very interesting mix of lime lemon juice and fish if you've never had ceviche
before that's probably the first thing you're going to experience is just like that wave of like
citrusy lime juice i'm really it's a shame that i don't like seafood if you don't like seafood
like me i think you're really missing out especially in Lima but whatever out of five
llamas how would you rate your civiche i've tried ceviche in other parts of south america i think
peruvian ceviche is the best but i wouldn't say it's like my number one you know peruvian food
i'd probably maybe give it like a four llamas out of five llamas but i think there's a couple other
dishes i probably look at first if i'm ordering at like a peruvian restaurant okay and that will
bring us to lomo saltado which is the second food item on our list one of those super classic things
to eat in peru lomo saltado really reminds me of stir fry and i remember saying that when we first
tried it in lima and i think when we did a little bit of research on it we learned that lomo saltado
was really created when there was a lot of chinese immigration into peru so it really is kind of like
this mix of like peruvian and chinese cuisine it's like marinated sirloin meat that's like chopped
small and fine kind of like you would for a stir-fry onions tomato and it seems to always
be served with rice what's also awesome about lomo saltado is that you can get it like anywhere in
peru if you're not into like being adventurous and trying out like different types of foreign
exotic peruvian cuisine you can just get lomo saltado i'm gonna go with three and a half llamas
i think i think with super high quality beef that could easily jump to a five we come from a place
in canada that just has the most incredible beef and so my like the beef mark is real high
so three and a half llamas for me but similar to lomo saltado our next one also has a lot of
chinese influence and the next one is not really a food but almost like a branch of food called
chifa so you'll find the word chifa everywhere you go in peru you'll see different types of
chifa restaurants nicole mentioned earlier back in the day there was a lot of chinese immigration
into peru and their like techniques and their cooking and their flavors have actually combined
with peruvian uh cooking techniques and flavors it is so good it really is like a branch of peruvian
food that is very chinese it very much feels like chinese food we tried a couple i think one of the
ones that we got on camera was chaufa a dish called chaufa year arroz chaufa which is like
their typical fried rice with like fried rice you know with your eggs and i think you're chopped up
green onion and then like some beef chunks like con carne or con pollo um that is a very normal
meal i suggest you try at least the arroz chaufa when you're in peru and it's so affordable if you
need a cheap meal chifa also if you're just kind of tired of like your typical peruvian
food or like western food and just want to try something completely different go to a chifa
restaurant and you still feel like you're eating like local peruvian food which is really nice
we didn't feel like we were like cheaping out and buying like pizza or spaghetti or
something in peru we were like no this is still peruvian yeah super cool so out of five llamas
it gets five llamas yeah yeah so good so the next dish may surprise some people because
when you think of peru people usually think of like llamas and alpacas and things like that
cute animals cute animals but when you go to peru you will think of now a different
animal especially if you're perusing the peruvian cuisine and that is cuy aka guinea pig so that
was one of the biggest i wouldn't say surprises because we knew that they eat guinea pig in peru
but it's still just like a little bit jarring to see a kind of fried guinea pig
on like the street side stalls yeah and i mean i guess it's just because you know as people from
north america guinea pig like their pets it's a cute little pet yeah furry little adorable
creatures that just live in people's houses we're pretty sure it's actually pronounced like kuwee
we don't really know i guess it's named after the sound a guinea pig makes oh it is yeah so
i've never owned a guinea pig oh that's so weird to me so yeah that's that's a yeah and it's it's
it's obviously like totally like normal in peru absolutely it's part of the tradition
it's part of their heritage it's honestly such an important food from what we learned i guess
um it was very important originally in like the andes parts of peru it has been eaten there for
like more than five thousand years our guide for we did a saltante trek up to machu picchu and i
remember him saying that for his birthday yeah oh he asked he gets guinea pig every year for
his birthday like it's a really important and special dish so anyways totally normal
obviously we went to peru we had to try guinea pig it looks like chicken like you know you get
a drumstick and thigh and all that stuff and its fried like it looks like fried chicken it looks
like fried chicken yeah exactly um but it doesn't taste anything like chicken i i think i remember
you saying that it was kind of like the dark meat of chicken but like lighter as in like like the
texture of meat that you get out of like a duck was the word i think that you used you know it
was good the first few bites but then it kind of weirded me out it's because i like kind of feel
like it should taste like chicken because it kind of looks like chicken yeah and then it started
to kind of drift away from the thought of chicken and it felt like i was really eating like a little
guinea pig thingy I don't think I can eat the head it's just a little too familiar looking for me
honestly great food if you want to try something new and exotic highly recommend it personally i'm
going to give it like one and a half llama heads maybe two yeah ooh i'm sorry if you're peruvian
that was harsh in terms of personal taste if you love it have at her it's all yours but i think for
like experience like a cultural experience that to me is very cool like i love that we got to try
a very classic peruvian dish so even though i had one bite and then couldn't have anymore i
would actually probably give him like two or three stars just because of the experience
all right this brings us to picarones it is a donut honestly i think it's probably the best way
to describe it but it is made out of like squash or sweet potato which makes you feel like it's
healthy you get it in like a container at least if you buy it as street food and you're given
like a container of syrup yeah to go with it and i don't know if you're supposed to just like pour
the syrup over the whole thing or dip the bite in the syrup whatever put the syrup on it somehow
that's what we did and it's delicious super great choice and really inexpensive wow probably give it
maybe like three i'll go three and a half i'm back to the half llamas yeah i have three and a half
i think it's a really nice place to start if you're interested in street food in peru
because it's all deep fried so like yeah you can't really go wrong
yeah unless the inside is under cooked I mean we didn't get sick
okay so next up we have aji de gallina which is like a chicken stew i think is how it's kind of
like described online when we looked it up so it's like shredded chicken in aji sauce which is
very common all across peru you can get aji sauce everywhere and it's served with rice it is so good
this was one of my favorite dishes that we had um when it came out i remember thinking
that it looked like curry yeah i thought it was like curry and rice or something
yeah it looks like curry and rice to me at least just because that's what i'm familiar
with it honestly looked like yellow curry and i was really expecting it to be spicy
because it looked like curry and it was not spicy at all in fact i'd say it was almost sweet
yeah so if i were to go off like one single bite i would also give it a five personally i like
to have meals with variety because otherwise i actually get kind of sick of eating like the same
food so i would probably end up with like four or four and a half star not stars llamas because
i loved it but it's just like after a whole plate of it you're like okay I'm kind of done
so the next one if you're looking for a variety you can get that easily at any kind of peruvian
food market and what they normally serve at these food markets are amuerzos which translates
basically to like lunch yeah its just the spanish word for lunch so you go in there you'll find
all these stalls of like different like mini kitchens each like operated by what seems to be
just like a different family true so almuerzo isn't actually like a specific dish it's more
like a type of dish yeah it's lunch translates to lunch but it is truly like usually it comes
with a soup to start right and then you get a plate of food and the plate is really what you
choose so you usually have on the menu a couple of different options for what your main plate is
so you choose which almuerzo which lunch like main dish you want and then you usually get a
juice with it often times you get a juice with it and it's incredibly local so um it's an experience
it is an experience if you're not used to eating at like a food market especially in south america
definitely try to order yourself an almuerzo yeah this is the moment to just like embrace
your travel experience and just go for it you're not really sure what you're gonna end up eating
maybe you'll like it hopefully you will um but you're gonna be served with love you're gonna
have a cool experience with like surrounded by other local people gosh it's really hard to
tease apart like the experience from the food to me because the food i would probably rate
usually around like uh three and a half llamas but if you take into account i think like the
experience then again it's a five because i'm like this is super cool it's like an activity
it truly is something as travelers that we would like to do to actually have a cultural
experience have an almuerzo okay so a food that we tried to in peru that seemed really different from
anything else we had already tried there was papa relleno and then i also had rocoto relleno and
they were similar but very different also so papa relleno is like this potato like it's like a
potato casing that was stuffed full of minced like ground beef with like different vegetables and
spices and deliciousness and then rocoto relleno was very similar but it actually was a pepper like
a hot pepper that had then been stuffed with this delicious combination of minced meat and
vegetables and spices and then also like baked in some sort of bread casing it really reminded me of
shepherd's pie yeah it's kind of like an all-in-one package yes yeah yeah they're
super cute and like just beautiful to look at anyways highly recommend for me i would say
four and a half stars no llamas okay who made up this scale so the next one is a little bit
it might throw some people off it's anticuchos so anticucho is like skewered meat but the meat that
they use is usually beef heart some people might have a hard time getting over that um like nicole
i tried it just you know it's a traditional food very important to peruvian culture it was good
it was like a little bit squishy chewy chewy well i tried a bite and we were both like ooh
so chewy it definitely has a distinct like organ taste taste i would agree with you there it's good
try it if you're interested in that if you're like into organs but it probably would be the
first thing you tried in peru i wouldn't yeah don't make it the first thing out of five llamas
uh i'm gonna go with like two and a half yeah i go with like two as well yeah i think it's
like one of those flavors that once you've had just a little bit of it it's like enough yeah so
this last item is not a food but we put on the list anyway because it's so important to peru
it is a pisco sour pisco is a spirit it's its own spirit to me it tastes i'd say a little like gin
a little like rum the pisco is composed of pisco the spirit egg white and lemon yeah and it's
served like a cocktail yes cocktail you can get also like pisco with so much other stuff like
you can have it in so many different varieties but the traditional pisco sour is made up of
those three ingredients pisco's a whole thing in peru so if you get a chance to try a pisco
um pisco sour is a great start so out of five llamas oh i think i'm gonna go for a five
yeah i think i'd go with five as well it's like definitely going to lead to good times
it's great okay that's all 10 foods yeah so now that we are at this part of the video we are going
to answer the question do we think peruvian food is all it's cracked up to be well we've been to
argentina we've tried the food in chile ecuador and bolivia and we're actually already in colombia
in those videos are coming next we've had lots of colombian food uh when we wait that against
peruvian food oh you're gonna weigh it against the other countries you know i i am gonna say peruvian
food is like number one yeah definitely what sets peru apart is just the diversity of flavor you can
get and i think part of that is also because of the different regions and like terrains they have
in peru as well because of course you've got the coast you've got the sea um and then you have high
andes mountains and that is a whole other cuisine i 100 agree that peruvian food is absolutely
incredible cuisine it is all it's cracked up to be it lives up to its name it lives up to its name
and it is uh to me like peruvian food could be a whole reason that you visit peru just come and
taste the food yeah full gastronomic tour and you know go to machu picchu but eat the food
definitely eat the food so we hope you enjoyed this video i don't know about you guys but i
am feeling very hungry now after talking about all this food we finished our coffee
now we need more food anymore yeah uh if you like this video give it a like and if you want
to see more of us consider subscribing we've got lots of great content coming up we do colombia's
coming that's where we are right now we have got awesome content from colombia coming up this is a
wonderful wonderful country but we've got lots of videos on peru too so if you are headed into peru
soon and you want to kind of check out what peru is all about we'll link the playlist as
well so you can click that and we'll catch you in the next one all right thanks for watching