Lima, first stop at the market

Food markets are an excellent starting point when discoverinf a city you don’t know and Lima counts 9.5 million registered inhabitants, plus a couple more that elude controls. You need to start somewhere. One imperative: avoid the polished and almost anaesthetised touristic places. As long as you have a guide who knows his stuff. The Marriott hotel in Miraflores where I’m staying is next to the border between the posh neighbourhood of Miraflores and the less respectable Surquillo, though it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Until a few years ago, tourists were always to avoid the latter. Things are different now: it’s fine at daytime, not after sunset. Unless you’re in fact looking for transgressions, at all costs. With all the connected risks. That is to say: no complaining afterwards. And in any case, the Mercado de Surquillo is only open from early in the morning till 4 pm. Built in 1939, it would only need to be demolished and rebuilt. The second floor is basically no longer usable and everything takes place on the ground floor. Not that the walls and windows are in the best conditions, but there are so many extraordinary ingredients there’s no point in looking above. After all, Peruvians themselves know well that sooner or later bulldozers will come and everything will then become better, brighter and more beautiful.

A very special visit. I have Gonzalo Carbajal, chef and promoter of culinary tours setting my pace and I remain surprised in front of all sorts of delicacies. For instance, I was wondering if «there are peaches in Peru» and ta-dah, here they are. Or everyone was praising palta while I wondered what that could be. Surprise: it’s avocado, which here is creamy. I believe it would be perfect in a prawn risotto, as long as I manage to take two or three to Milan. There’s even a seedless type. Nothing genetically modified. They sometimes happen to cover the plant so it gets no light and hence it is not pollinated and the fruit stays small. I didn’t get the reason, and besides in the end it’s something like a large suppository, which they didn’t show as a real precious product. A box at the bottom you’ll find it hard to notice.

The beauty of popular markets such as this is the countless number of stands, a hive with small, specialised cells. And inside each one, a queen bee that makes sure that every product attracts the buyer. All this incredibly crammed in and with micro tables where two or four people can sit and eat something. Now, while I have nothing against doing all the grocery shopping there, fruits and vegetables, fish and meat, bread and cakes, I would rather eat, and it actually happened, in one of the ceviche places, which are clean and well kept, while I’d have to think about these other rather sloppy places. Yet given my guide aims for something else, I’ll follow.

At «puesto 187/188» here comes Erica and her Don Cevichero. She and the person serving us, Magdalena, turned out to be two perfectly nice and efficient people. The owner also runs a real restaurant, where I presume she moves in the evening once the market is closed. First a light fish stock with fresh white corn, onion and crispy grains of yellow corn to clean palate and stomach. Then ceviche, pan fried octopus and fried calamari. Always paying attention, afraid to find a flaming chilli pepper with the chopped marinated fish. With Gonzalo, there was also photographer Alessandro Currarino. His father and grandfather were born in Levanto, in the province of La Spezia. He visited twice to see where his roots come from. He doesn’t speak and doesn’t feel Italian. He’s Peruvian, at most you could present him as Italian-Peruvian. He took plenty of photos of me. He was happy and I was even more so.

2. To be continued

Find the first episode here