Lima Day 12: I'm in A Rut, But What a Rut!

Monday, December 21

If I had to eat like this every day, then well, I would eat like this every day. I broke no new ground, but had three great Meals.

First, I had another of the seemingly never-ending supply of Tamales in my apartment. They cost 75 cents on the street. And the Bread is another dime.

For Lunch, I took a bus, and another bus, and wound up at El Characato de Oro. They're a restaurant that serves food traditionally from the city of Arequepa, which is in the southern part of the country. Luckily for me, I like Arequipian Food. I had a Rocoto Relleno and Adobo de Cerdo.

Rocoto Rellenos were reportedly invented in Arequipa, and this was an excellent representative. Adobo is a way of preparing Pork. An fabulous way, I may add. As far as I understand, it is something that people usually only eat on Sundays, but the restaurant had a sign up announcing that they had Adobo. I suspect that it was leftovers, but I didn't ask. It was fabulous. You're supposed to dip the Bread into the Soup, so what I did was: dip the Bread into the Soup.

For Dessert, I had the Pride of Arequipa: Queso Helado.

I don't know if it is better than the version at Panchita, but it is wonderful all on its own.


I spend a lot of time when I should be working searching the Internet for places to eat in Lima. During one of my searches, I discovered Nanka. They're all the way over on the other side of town, but the website and menu looked good, and they had some nice reviews on Trip Advisor (unlike the Tourist Trap last week, I felt that I could trust these reviews, mostly because of the restaurant's location), but also because they featured Rice and Duck as one of the first pictures on their site. They claim to be organically-based, so that was a plus, I hoped.

It's far, and Christmas week traffic is even worse than regular Lima traffic, so it takes Sandra and I an hour to go the nine or ten miles to the restaurant. But it turns out it was worth the effort. The place is beautiful, the service was excellent, and the food was very, very good.

We started by sharing two Appetizers. The first was Quinua Croquettes, and the second was Grilled Octopus.

The Croquettes tasted like, well, Croquettes. They came with two dipping sauces, on Sweet and one Spicy (she's pointing at the Sweet one). Sandra and I were fans of the Spicy one.

When I say that 'we' spit the Octopus plate, what I mean is "I had 85% of the Octopus.' It was excellent.

For our Main Courses, Sandra had the Gnocchi Andino, which she said was delicious. And very Green! I had... get ready... Rice with Duck.

The Duck, in this case, was de-boned and placed on top of the Rice. The Rice itself was excellent, and I wound up eating most of it before even starting on the Duck.

I would certainly return to Nanka, but not during a holiday season; the traffic was just too much to deal with.

That's it for the day.