Until recently, most tourists going to Peru just wanted to go to Cusco and from there then go to Machu Picchu. Currently, about 75,000 tourists visit Lima (Peru's capital) every year to enjoy its food, with an average expenditure of $1,250 per person. Lima not only has good restaurants, but there are 52 private cooking schools. Peru is one of the few countries in Latin America (the other two are Brazil and Mexico) which has one of the branches of the cooking school Le Cordon Bleu from France.
From the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world in 2014, according to a William Reed Media compilation, the number 15 position corresponds to Restaurant Central (chef Virgilio Martínez) and No. 18 to the restaurant A & G (Astrid y Gastón, chefs Diego Muñoz and Gastón Acurio), both in Lima. In addition, position 95 on the list of the 100 best restaurants in the world corresponds to the restaurant Malabar, also in Lima. On the other hand, of the 50 best restaurants in Latin America, six of the top twenty are in Lima.
Traditionally, Peru has been an exporter of raw materials. From Potosi silver in colonial times (currently in Bolivia), through guano (fertilizer from seabird excrements) and saltpeter (sodium nitrate) in the nineteenth century and then oil fish and fishmeal, gold and copper. Other important minerals in Peru are bismuth, tin, molybdenum, lead and zinc. However, the Peruvian cuisine uses the natural resources of the country and gives them added value. Currently, tourism due to Peruvian cuisine contributes only 3% of Peru's GDP, but it is the fastest growing sector of the economy.
Much of the rise and fame of Peruvian cuisine is owed to chef Gaston Acurio. The chef and entrepreneur Acurio, in the last two decades has created 37 restaurants in 11 countries, with annual sales exceeding US $100 million, and where each shows a different type of Peruvian food, from ceviche to the Italian-Peruvian fusion. One of the projects of Acurio, in 2014, has been moving his famous restaurant A&G to a new place, the Moreyra House, a colonial mansion from the seventeenth century located in San Isidro, the financial district of Lima. There was an investment of US $6 million for the restoration and adaptation of Moreyra House as a restaurant. It features a garden where cooks grow herbs to be used in cooking.
Perhaps the most emblematic dish of Peruvian cuisine is ceviche (from Quechua "siwich") a pre-Columbian dish consisting of chunks of raw fish with lemon juice, onion (better if red onion), hot pepper and salt (the original indigenous dish was shellfish with chili and salt). Other traditional dishes include anticuchos (beef heart skewers served with potatoes), causa (mashed yellow potatoes with lemon, hot pepper, lettuce, corn, fresh cheese, boiled eggs, avocado and black olives. It can also be filled with chicken or tuna) and ocopa (a green sauce whose main ingredients are mirasol pepper and huancatay, but also has fresh cheese, peanuts and crushed crackers. Served over boiled potatoes and garnished with slices of boiled egg). Indeed, potato is the key ingredient of Peruvian cuisine. There are over 3000 varieties of potatoes in Peru.
In addition to the indigenous origin cuisine and Creole cuisine, there are other styles of cuisine in Peru. Thus we have, the Italian-Peruvian cuisine, the Chifa (Peruvian-Cantonese fusion) cuisine, the Nikkei (Peruvian-Japanese fusion) cuisine, the cuisine of Arequipa (rich in shrimp), the northern cuisine (based on wildfowl) the novo-Andean cuisine (modern dishes with ingredients from the Andes) and Amazonian cuisine (with a variety of fruits, roots, leaves and river fish).
Finally, we will mention that there are also typical drinks of Peru. In addition to the purple corn chicha and coca tea, Peru produces pisco (a strong liquor of grapes) with which the famous cocktail called Pisco Sour is made, one of the favorites of Humphrey Bogart.
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