All You Can (m)Eat

It’s less of a burger and more a study in meat, really. Once you add braised short rib and foie gras into the mixture, it’s difficult to call ground sirloin on a bun a hamburger, which typically conjures up images of the all-American, Joe Six Pack, rootin’ tootin’ good ol’ U.S. of A. meat sandwich.

It is certainly not that, but then again when has Daniel Boulud ever looked for anything that simple? His food has always been outstanding, from Daniel (which earned the coveted 4-star rating from the New York Times in January of this year), to DGBG, which just opened to quite impressive reviews, to his 8 other internationally acclaimed restaurants.

So, while it is not your typical hamburger, it is most definitely a wonderfully rich and delicious study in meat. Beginning with ground sirloin—a great choice because it is relatively lean but with enough marbled fat to make it juicy—the patty is then stuffed with braised short ribs and served with a dollop of foie gras in the middle. The texture of the sirloin perfectly contrasts with the stringy braised short ribs, and the two flavors—tender and savory ribs packed into a denser and juicier shell of ground sirloin—come together perfectly. The dollop of foie gras adds a bit of muted creaminess, which intensifies the flavor combination. Served on a parmesan bun, which doesn’t do much to rein in 5 inch tall inside, the burger is a modern meat marvel. It may be richer than the Astor’s, but it is definitely worth it. (At $32 you may be wondering why, but just go and eat it and you won’t be wondering anymore. Though I didn’t try it, there is an option to add either 10 or 20 grams of shaved black truffle. It significantly adds to the price, though, and the already expensive burger goes up to either $75 or $150, depending on the amount of truffles you add.)

The ambiance in db Bistro Moderne is also quite low key, but retains a quiet elegance that lets you know that you’re in a nice restaurant without overdoing it. They have dialed down their presumption and dialed up their attention to detail, which makes for a very pleasant and easy-going dining experience.

Even though it’s not an everyday burger, it is most definitely an extraordinary take on a classic American favorite, and one that every meat-lover should try immediately.

So, make really elaborate meat sandwiches with foie gras and braised short ribs (and black truffles if you feel so inclined), not war.

And now, to bed.

Babbo or Bust?

Maybe it was rigmarole of getting a reservation: our first available table is exactly one month from today, here’s your reservation code, sorry our day-manager made a mistake and you actually can’t have your original reservation, here’s another one, you wanted one before 11?, sorry we can only do 5:15. (Actually I was lucky and scored a Saturday at 8, but the first four steps were actually like that…)
But we finally got to Babbo at 8:10 on Saturday night not knowing what to expect but very excited about pork bellies and beef cheeks and goose livers, oh my, and were directed to a table in the back. I’d read and heard magnificent things about Babbo: the pasta is so original, no one has done anything quite like this with Italian food before, the prices are very reasonable, the service is impeccable. Some of those things were true, but the question of whether or not it would be worth a month’s wait was still very much up in the air.
The space was beautifully decorated—high ceilings, nicely spaced tables, and a beautiful second floor dining room with a large glass skylight in the middle of the room. More than just an impressive dining room, though, the service is involved in an intricate dance with one another and with their customers; within the first five minutes we had three people come to our table to take a wine order or make sure we were okay with out or bring us water. They have their timing down nicely, although it can be a bit overwhelming to be approached by four different people when you haven’t even gotten a chance to look at the menu yet. Before we’d gotten a chance to order our wine, we were brought an amuse bouche, “compliments of the chef.” It was a warm curried chickpea spread on top of toast, and it was fine. There was a hint of sweetness to the chickpeas, they were a bit firmer than usual, so complimented the crispy toast nicely. But the whole thing was a bit bland, and unimpressive. Not a great start, but we were both willing to put it aside because our waitress was very nice and seemed surprisingly down to earth, grounded in reality and aware that, as two 21-year-olds, we needed a different kind of service than the typical patron.
The appetizer we ordered—grilled octopus with spicy limoncello vinaigrette—was also quite tasty. It was cooked well, so it was tender and not chewy or tough as it can easily get, and the vinaigrette cut the somewhat creamy flavor of the octopus with a nice tang and touch of hotness. Then came the pasta course, which was by far the stand out portion of the meal. I had the beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose liver and black truffles, which was not only a fabulous blend of flavors but also so strikingly original that it begged the question of exactly how these ingredients were put together. Bridget had a squid ink spaghetti with rock shrimp, spicy salami calabrese and green chiles, which was also delicious. While I’ve never had rock shrimp before, it is easy to tell why it is a nicer compliment to a pasta dish like this one: the taste is much smoother and you don’t run the risk of having that chalky texture that can significantly bring down any dish, especially pasta. The pairing of the shrimp with the salami and green chiles was perfectly balanced, and left room for all the flavors to develop without overpowering each other.
So, all told, the actual food portion of the meal was great, and very reasonably priced. (For an appetizer, 2 main courses and a bottle of wine the total was only $100.) It was the whole production surrounding the experience that left a somewhat flat taste in my mouth. If this were still a neighborhood ristorante and enoteca as it touts itself, then I would wholeheartedly suggest a trip there. But it’s become so much more than that since it first opened in 1998 that I think it may have actually lost some of its luster. It is no longer a friendly Italian restaurant where you can taste really good food in a comfortable friendly, but a hyped up eatery that screams that you are sitting some place ultra chic and hip. So, while it is certainly worth the money, it may not actually be worth the wait.

Still, you should probably make beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose livers, not war.
And now, to bed.

The Great Chile Fiesta of '09

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens aren’t nice to walk around in when it’s raining, but the Chile Pepper Fiesta was happening rain or shine, so I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. It’s been six years since the last time I was at the gardens, and I’ve never been to a Chile Pepper Fiesta (or any other event surrounding the chile pepper, for that matter), so I had no idea what to expect. What I didn’t expect was Rogue Brewery Chipotle Ale, or Kumquat Cookery’s chocolate-chili cupcakes or chocolate-chili brownies from Mari’s New York. But I was very pleasantly surprised by all three.

The first stop I made was the Rogue Brewery table, which had the longest line of any. Unfortunately I got there too late to try the chocolate stout, but figuring that it was only 2 o’clock and I didn’t need an entire meal in liquid form, I decided to just get the Chipotle Ale. At first it tasted more or less like the Dead Guy Ale, made by the same brewer. It had a full-bodied, sweet flavor, but with a crisp taste that took away some of the heaviness. The real kick, though, came at the end, when the smokiness of the chipotle hit the back of the tongue, and gave it a spicy, almost cinnamon flavor. I was sold: usually I could take or leave an ale, preferring something a bit lighter in color and flavor, but the extra smoky kick at the end set this apart from other ales, and the hoppy sweetness complimented it perfectly.

Feeling quite contented as I strolled around on the wet grass, craning my neck to fit under my friend Ansley’s umbrella, we set off to see what other interesting flavors this chili pepper extravaganza held in store. Directly across from the Rogue Brewery tent was a mini-cupcake table where representatives of the Kumquat Cookery were sampling their chocolate-chili concoctions. As I am a bit of a sample maniac—I will try almost anything as long as it’s cut into small pieces and free—I was drawn to their table like a moth to a flame. (Actually the metaphor is quite apt: had I eaten enough of these delicious cupcakes I could have died just like the poor moth in the fire…) In any event I’m glad I was drawn to it, because the cupcakes were very unique: they were surprisingly fluffy and the tanginess of the chili brought out the savory flavor in the chocolate, which doesn’t happen often e. What brought it all together, though, was the chocolate icing, which was creamy without being heavy and added a layer of sweetness without overpowering the balance of savory chocolate and tangy chili.

At this point it was raining somewhat torrentially, but far be it from Ansley and I to be deterred by a little bit of rain, so we headed over to the next chocolate stand, which happened to be Mari’s Chocolate. Apparently Mari specializes in brownies, and, after tasting her brownies I’m thinking that we need more brownie-ologists in the world. Only someone who has spent a long time thinking about how to make them could have put heat so effectively into such a small square of brownie. About one-inch by one-inch by one-inch, the little cubes were the perfect amount of fudge to cake ratio: dense without being too heavy, moist without being too greasy and chocolaty enough without being too fudgy. Their only downfall was their price; $5 for two small cubes of brownie is too much, even if they are “artisanal brownies” sold at Barney’s and Bergdorf Goodman’s. I tried the “heat” and “caramel sea salt” versions, which were both delicious. Both accompaniments, ancho and chipotle peppers (for the heat ones) and sea salt (for the caramel-sea salt ones), gave distinctly different flavors to the chocolate, which made for an interesting comparison between then two.

As we slid away from Mari’s table, wrapped in a cloud of beer and chocolate and pepper induced calmness, we decided that it was raining a bit too hard, and we were a bit too full, to take any more advantage of the Great Chile Pepper Fiesta of ’09. We walked happily back through the rain to the subway, and rode back uptown, the blunted smokiness of chipotle and ancho and cayenne still lingering on the back of our tongues.

So, make chili-chocolate brownies or cupcakes or beer, not war.

And now, to bed.

BLFGTs

The title of this post represents neither the new cool Twitter abbreviation nor a shortened expletive. It is an acronym for what I ate for dinner tonight, and also one of the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever had. (BLFGT = Bacon + Lettuce +Fried Green Tomato)

My friend Paige is from Alabama and she is proud of it. She is a very good cook and will periodically make food that reminds her of home, both to give her Northeastern friends an education in Southern cooking and also to provide herself some of the comfort we all feel when we eat something evocative of home. Paige (a theater major and very talented actress) can also be sneaky, as she was tonight, when she came back to our apartment and casually mentioned that she’d “picked up some green tomatoes” at the supermarket. Who knew she had this juicy mint-green trump card sitting in her back pocket, just waiting to be turned into a delicious sandwich?
Having no idea what was coming I didn’t spend all day thinking about what a great dinner I’d be having, or tailoring my day’s meals to allow an absolute gorging come 7:30. Next time, rest assured, I will.
The BLFGT is very easy to make, as Paige will humbly attest to once you’re biting into it and telling her on how nicely the cornmeal coating on the tomato compliments its firmness and woody taste, or how the lettuce provides just the right amount of watery respite from the salty bacon. The green tomatoes—which are just the unripe brothers of the red ones—are firmer and less juicy than their differently colored kin, and have a very fresh taste almost like you crossed a ripe tomato with a cucumber: the coolness and touch of sourness of the cucumber cuts the sweet tomato, but the general texture is similar. As a whole the sandwich works because of the five distinct textures and flavors that blend so nicely: sourdough bread, savory bacon, soft Bibb lettuce, fresh and woody tomato, and creamy mayonnaise.
The recipe is as follows:
For 4 BLFGTs:
1 large or 2 medium green tomatoes
½ c. corn meal
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp. onion powder
1tsp. chili powder
½ c. milk
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 lb. bacon
1 head Bibb lettuce
1 loaf sourdough bread
Mayonnaise to taste

1) Slice tomatoes into ½ inch slices, and lie flat in a baking dish with short sides
2) Pour milk over tomatoes and let sit for 10 minutes
3) While tomatoes are sitting, cook bacon in a large pan until crispy
4) Mix corn meal, salt, pepper, garlic, and chili onion powders in a pie tin
5) Dip tomatoes into cornmeal mixture, and over medium heat, fry tomatoes for 1-2 minutes per side, or until browned
6) Wash and separate Bibb lettuce into individual pieces
7) Assemble sandwiches using sourdough bread, mayonnaise, tomatoes, bacon, and lettuce

Hopefully the sandwich will catch on and the BLFGT will become the new Twitter abbrev.
So, make BLGFTs, not war.
And now, to bed.

Appetitte for Deconstruction in New York

Note: Since my last post nearly 5 months ago I have been lucky enough to touch 3 continents, the rooftop of Africa, the Pacific cost in Los Angeles, the Atlantic coast in Rhode Island, and, last but certainly not least, the corner of Broadway and 114th St. in New York. I'm sorry to say that I did not finish writing my tale of Peruvian Proportions, nor about speeding across the Serengeti Planes or reaching Uhru Peak, 6,895 meters away from terra firma. This blog, though it still holds the same web address, is no longer just about Julie in Peru, but about about my culinary exploits in New York and where ever else I can get my hands on food. Hopefully it will end up being about other things too, but first and foremost I'm hoping to find out just what kind of gastronomic exploits this city holds for me. That said, I've whetted my appetite and it is, as always, up for deconstruction.

Thanks for reading!

__________________________________________________________________

It has been nearly 4 ½ years since the City Council approved the plan that paved the blue and yellow brick road for Ikea’s entrance. About 5 years before that a Fairway Market sprung up, gracing the shores of the rogue part of Brooklyn with a historically checkered past. And only about 10 years before "The Market Like No Other" appeared, Life Magazine named Red Hook one of the 10 worst neighborhoods in the U.S., calling it “the crack capital” of the country. Basically in the past 20 years we have seen Red Hook grow up from a violent teenager with explosive anger issues to a 30-something businessman with 2 kids and a Subaru.

As a diverse neighborhood—which has housed one of the city’s initial Puerto Rican communities, vibrant Italian and Irish populations and many of the city’s first longshoremen—Red Hook has long been home to lots of diverse eateries. And the tradition still stands, as Mexican, Ecuadorian and one ceviche, food trucks flock to the Red Hood Ball Fields on Saturdays and Sundays, waiting for the throngs of people who have heard about it.

And, living up to their hype, each weekend these alternating quilted-silver and white trucks line up like soldiers, armed with piles of tortillas and mountains of fresh mango and pineapple. They adorn their trucks with war paint: strings of blue and white and yellow flags denoting the Ecuadorian pupusa vendors, red and green and white paper cutouts flapping haphazardly in the breeze to signify tacos and pico de gallo. These trucks are by no means a new attraction; on the contrary, at least one of the Ecuadorian trucks touts that to have been in business since 1991. The ballpark seems well prepared for the onslaught of people, too. There are tables set up and even a small kiosk selling blow up carnival toys like big hammers and neon green dogs on a wooden dowel that you can pretend to walk.

Since the trucks are so popular the lines are very long: it’s best to go to the taco truck with the shortest line—on Saturday that was Mama Mexico’s Taco Truck—and get a pork al pastor taco for your wait in line for either a pupsa or ceviche. I ordered a chicken taco, and thankfully my generous friends, who had more foresight than I, gave me bites of their carne and al pastor tacos. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson about chicken tacos, which is that they’re usually not that good. Often made of dark meat, which is fattier and therefore richer, the flavor of the marinade doesn’t seem to come across as much in a chicken taco than in other kinds. In this particular one, there was too much filling inside (I couldn’t close the tortilla, and there were actually 2 of them, one to act as a sort of retaining wall for the other), and the chicken tasted greasy and bland. Of course, as with many tacos, the flavor has as much to do with the salsas that adorn it than with the meat itself. The pickled jalapeños and carrots tasted tart with a sharp acid kick at the end, the pico de gallo was spicy but textured, and the salsa roja had a complex enough flavor that added a whole lot of heat without dulling your mouth. Still, the quality and taste of the meat didn’t do justice to its accompaniments.

The pork al pastor, was a completely different story. Served in a thick brown sauce that was sweet as it was savory, these tacos were a much better indication of why the carts are so popular. First of all there was not as much meat in the shell which allowed for easier eating. Second, the cooking technique—it looked and tasted like it was braised, although I’m not sure—allowed for the sauce to bring out and compliment the natural flavor and texture of the meat. Topped with lettuce, onions, cilantro and a bit of salsa roja, the flavors of this taco worked much better together.

While the 20 minute wait for pupsas would have been worth it even without the tacos, it certainly made the time pass more quickly. A pupsa is something like an Ecuadorian stuffed pancake: it is made of two corn tortillas, joined around their edges and filled in the middle with things ranging from cheese and jalapeños to pork to chicken, and grilled. The dough outside is a bit thicker than a regular corn tortilla and has a touch of sweetness. The first one I tried, queso and jalapeños, converted me. The cheese tasted like jack cheese, mild and creamy, while the jalapeños cut through it sharply. And the shell, with a consistency that lies somewhere between a corn tortilla and corn bread, got a crispy outside and theoretically should have melt the cheese inside, like a gooey grilled cheese pocket. In actuality the cheese wasn’t melted as much as it could have been, but I credit that more to the amount of cheese that was stuffed inside, that was for all intents and purposes way too much, than to the actual preparation. The second pupusa I had was filled with stewed chicken. I liked the second better because I thought that there was a bit too much cheese in the first, and because the chicken had a nice tanginess and gave marked contrast to the bland chicken I’d had in the taco.

Everyone and their foodie-mother has written about the Red Hook Ball Field Street Vendors, so if you haven’t gone I would highly recommend it, even if only to watch the soldierly procession of trucks competing with one another. And, at the very least, this eclectic mix of vibrant food vendors is surely a better alternative to Swedish Meatballs.
To get to the Red Hook Ball Field Street Vendors, take the 2 or 3 train to Wall Street and walk east to Pier 11, where the Ikea Water Taxi leaves from. (It is free on weekends, and costs $5 during the week). Once you get off the taxi in Brooklyn, walk across the parking lot to Halleck St. Make a left on Halleck St. and walk 2 blocks until Bay St. Go left on Bay st., and continue 4 blocks to the intersection of Clinton and Bay Streets. The vendors are there on the weekends, beginning around 10 o'clock.

Make pickled jalapeños, not war.

And now, to bed.

Lima (my current city of residence) is huge and swallows you whole. It pays no heed to blog posts you need to write or e mails that need returning. So the tardiness of this post is through no fault of my own; all the blame can be put on this enormous and sprawling city that feels like it has no end, where the streets all have similar names and there is no grid-like rhyme or reason to the layout of the streets. (Just a joke, but in all seriousness I have spent much of the past week trying to figure out this behemoth of a city, and, unfortunately, not gotten much farther than a 6 block radius of my apartment.)

So I should start with my experience in the jungle, which is chronologically where I left off from the last post, but first a short detour to last Friday (I would say the highlight of my trip thus far), when I had the honor and good fortune of meeting Gastón Acurio, one of Peru’s (and, many would say, Latin America’s) most well known chefs.
First, a bit of background. One of the biggest draws of this program for most people is the independent study project that gets completed your last month here. The topic is, as the name would suggest, picked by the student, and within my group they range from the rise of evangelism in Lima to the impact of UN Convention 169 on indigenous rights to the mixture of indigenous and western traditions in the composition of modern Peruvian music. Combining my interest in eating and writing about food, I chose to study how Peruvian food has changed in the past 30 years, and how globalization is forcing it to morph into a product that is suitable for an ever expanding and changing global market. Focusing specifically on one dish—causa—which is basically a cake of mashed potatoes mixed with ají amarillo (yellow pepper) and mayonnaise and topped with anything, ranging from avocado and tomato to lobster, I am looking at how and why the cuisine of Peru is changing in the ways that it is.
So, for this topic, all signs pointed to Gastón Acurio as the man to talk to, because he is at the cutting edge of contemporary Peruvian food. He owns 15 or 20 restaurants in at least 4 countries in Latin America, Spain and the US, and his flagship restaurant, Astrid y Gastón, is consistently rated one of the best in Latin America. Luckily for me, Dean Karlan, Jake’s co-author, likes Gastón’s restaurants and is a frequent visitor to them, and was nice enough to give me his phone number. Mentioning Dean’s name was like having a golden ticket, and 10 minutes after I had e mailed Gastón’s secretary on Friday morning, I had a meeting for 4:30 that afternoon. Immediately I set to trying to get as much information about him as I could, so I could feel prepared to talk to him.
At 4:30 I arrived at his office and was ushered up a flight of stairs into the top floor of an apartment building that had been furnished with a state of the art kitchen, a waiting room decorated with the prizes he’d won and articles written about him, and a beautiful model kitchen that looked like it was used for photo shoots. After waiting for about 20 minutes, I was called back to the model kitchen where he was being interviewed by another journalist. The first thing he asked me was whether or not I’d visited any of his restaurants, and when I said that I’d tried to make a reservation but couldn’t get one he said “well I’m sure we can arrange that,” and before I knew what was happening I had a reservation for me and my 6 friends that night.
Figuring that things probably couldn’t get much better than that, we sat down to talk and I began asking him a bit about the changes he’s seen in Peruvian food in the past 20 years. We spoke for about 30 minutes, during which time he told me about his bigger picture project; as he explains it, as long as Peru is exporting a majority of crude natural resources, the country is destined to stay in a lower economic sphere, and will never develop to the level of the US or Western Europe. In his eyes, bringing up the level of cuisine of Peru, by focusing on everything from the physical space of the restaurants you design to the quality of the ingredients you use to the decorations you make on the plates you serve, is the first step in developing the products and services of Peru, so that they can eventually become known around the world as high end products. That is his mission, and he is putting a finger in every pie that he can to realize it. It was incredibly interesting to speak with him, and he even obliged me by speaking in English so I could understand our interview.

The restaurant itself is not showy: there is no big sign (there is, in fact, no sign at all, only the name written on the side of the building), nor is the building big and ornately painted. You wouldn’t find it just walking around Mira Flores—the upscale Lima neighborhood that houses it—you would have to know where you’re going. Once you walk inside, though, you see what Gastón means when he says that he is focusing on every little detail. We sat at the bar, so we didn’t get to see the dining room, but even from the little we saw it is clear that he is a man on a mission; the bar is beautiful white stone that looks like marble, but there are light fixtures underneath the stone so it looks like it’s glowing. The room that houses the bar has small tables and couches, where patrons who are waiting for their tables sit and sip on expensive and elegant-sounding drinks, like the insert drink name here, of which I had three and can assure you are quite tasty. The room is dimly lit and there is a quiet ambient music on in the background, to assure the patron that she is not in a stale tourist restaurant, but a cutting edge, cosmopolitan culinary Mecca. All that, and we hadn’t even been given our bread yet.
Having no idea what we were in for—would we get a menu and get to pick what we liked? Would he just send out some things?—we sat down at the bar and ogled the beautiful surroundings. After sitting for about 10 minutes, the courses started rolling out. The first was the causichas—a spin off of the causa that I was studying—with five different small causas, topped with everything from a lobster salad to crab claws. After that came the ceviche, which was just soulfish—a white fish with a dense texture and a creamy flavor—and ají (hot pepper) marinated in lemon and lime juice.
Then came the octopus.
Jake had told me about the octopus, insomuch as it was the best he’d ever had, but other than that I had no idea what to expect. Until I came to Peru, the eight legged creature scared me, and every time I saw it on a menu all I could think of was the scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Eddie Valient walks into the bar and the octopus a bar tender, standing behind the bar making 4 drinks at once. But, fortunately for me, ceviche mixto includes octopus, and so without even thinking, I tried it and took a liking to it. In ceviche it really acts as a foil for the acid and pepper, and so the strongest impression it leaves is its chewy texture and a sound like a boot on packed snow.
This octopus was completely different. I don’t know how it was prepared—it tasted like it may have been grilled because it had a slightly charred taste—but the texture was smooth and soft, the flavor very mild and almost creamy. It was served with a sauce that I couldn’t describe except to say that it complimented and brought out the flavors in the octopus incredibly, so when you took a bit the flavors and texture mixed in your mouth and felt like a taste bud massage.
In my mind nothing topped the octopus, but the last three plates were still very good in their own right. The cuy (guinea pig) crepes—blue corn crepes that had a touch of sweetness with breaded and fried guinea pig meat and a satay peanut sauce—and braised lamb with brown sauce were followed by a sampling of desserts, which ranged from maracuya ice cream to an intense chocolate cake. Six courses and three hours later we left the restaurant feeling like we were on top of the world: filled with some of the best food in Lima that we had been graciously given by one of the most popular chefs in Latin America.
For me, it could not have been better.

And now, to bed.

First, let me apologize for taking so long to get this post up.

We returned to Cusco on Monday after having spent 16 days traveling. We went first to Lima, then to Iquitos, down the Amazon to the jungle, back to Iquitos, and finally back to Cusco. It was, among all else, a lesson in sensory overload and mental digestion of three completely distinct places that, save the common Peruvian flag, are seemingly different countries. But, if there is one thing I’ve observed about Peru since I’ve been here is that it’s a country of contradictions and seemingly random juxtapositions; the landscape almost demands it, with three completely separate climates in the Andes, on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon jungle. Luckily, in the past three weeks, I’ve been able to see a major city in each climate region.

I. Lima

We arrived in Lima three weeks ago, on Saturday, March 21 to beautiful sun and humidity. After the rainy season, Cusco begins to dry and cool off, and since I get cold when the mercury plunges below about 65 degrees I was glad to get to Lima where it was a comfortable 80. We met the director of the Lima portion of the program Gonzalo, in the airport and he took us to our hostel. We were staying in Mira Flores, which is, from what I’ve gathered by talking to my Cusqueñan mother, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. It is right on the beach, filled with manicured lawns, gated apartment buildings and fancy cars and has a main street that runs through the middle that could—by a relatively small stretch of the imagination—be mistaken for a city in the US. (Perhaps somewhere in Las Vegas, as Larco—the name of the street—is lined with large casinos that have water cascading down big stone sculptures in front of them.) It is also one of the safest areas of the city that, by all accounts, is quite dangerous and not the kind of place where you’d want to be out along at night. Our Academic Director told us that when you get into a taxi at night you are supposed to take down the license place number and call someone to let them know it. Then you are supposed to call them when you get home, just to assure them that you got home safely. Yes, perhaps it’s a bit over cautious and compulsive, but I’d venture to guess that there is a reason she told us to keep that in mind when coming home at night. But Mira Flores, I suppose a bit like the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, is a suspension of that reality, and shrouds the dangerous face of Lima with bright lights, a 24 hour grocery store that is remarkably like whole Foods, and an outdoor mall complete with Starbucks, Chili’s and Tony Roma’s.
After dropping our bags at the hostel we were led about four blocks away, to a cevicheria called Punto Azul. I should mention that it is a pretty hard and fast Gringo rule that one does not eat ceviche in Cusco and saves their fish fix for Lima, where the seafood is so fresh you can almost see it still moving. (Why would you make a point to have sushi in Nebraska, when you could go to New York and literally trace the two-hour journey of salmon from boat to plate?) But, of course the Cusqueñans don’t see it that way (I’m sure Lincoln, Nebraska is chock full of sushi restaurants), and so for my last meal in Cusco my family took me out for ceviche. It was very good and tasted fresh; I was also able to avoid any stomach or digestion issues, so it must have been okay. In any event, I was excited to taste the difference between this ceviche and what I’d had the day before. I’ve learned, from cookbooks and talking to people, that ceviche is just a broad term for seafood that is marinated in lemon or lime juice. I hope I will be able to tell you more about it after May 10, when I will have completed my Independent Study Project on typical and “new-Andean” Peruvian food, but for now all I can say is that all the ceviche I have eaten is just fish—usually light colored, like kingfish—and sometimes scallops, shrimp, calamari or octopus, with onions and sometimes hot pepper marinated in acidic juice and served over a bed of lettuce with a side of sweet potato and choclo, which is like a waxier version of corn on the cob. It is divine, and though not a substitute for sushi luncheon (really nothing is a substitute for that) it is certainly is a delicious variation on the same ingredient. We also ordered arroz con mariscos—rice with shellfish—which tasted a bit like paella without meat, and tacu tacu, which was a base of rice and lentils with shellfish mixed in. Everything was absolutely delicious, and by the time I left Punto Azul I was convinced that this week would be one of the best I’d spent in Peru.
The next few days proved my initial assumption correct, and exploring the area of Lima around my hostel in Mira Flores was interesting and a nice change from Cusco. We had class in the mornings, but after 1:30 we were free. The first few days we spent wandering around Mira Flores, in large part trying to find our way down to the beach. The neighborhood abuts the ocean, but the residential area is built high up on tall bluffs, which, although providing beautiful views of the beach, prove difficult to navigate for Americans trying to find a beach to lie on. Eventually we found our way to one with crystal blue water and a small sandy area where we could put our towels. It almost didn’t seem real: Monday afternoon with nothing to do except lie on the beach and watch the surfers crisscross on top of the rough surface and try to avoid the rip tide. Welcome to Lima!
By Tuesday Lima was feeling like home, and Gonzalo graciously offered up his beach house—situated about an hour and a half outside Lima—to the 15 of us, to give us a little taste of Spring Break Peru ’09. It is the closest thing to an oasis that I’ve ever seen. After you get outside the outskirts of Lima, driving north up the coast, the buildings and houses start to melt into the sand, and you quickly realize that you’re in a desert. Climbing up from the ground are political ads painted on half finished buildings and billboards advertising Coke and D’Anafria Ice Cream. (These are no ordinary billboards, either. Many of them are 3-dimensinal and all of them have some figure springing off the rectangular confines of the billboard and trying to jump into your car.) We drove for about an hour through the desert, half expecting to see a camel or at the very least a cactus, but there was just reddish brown sand stretching as far as the eye could see. Finally, around kilometer 135, the driver made a right turn and we drove for along a dirt road lined with white rocks for about 3 minutes until we pulled up in front of a big cement house. Gonzalo lives in a gated beach community, apparently a very popular thing for middle class Limanians, which has a stretch of private beach about 500 years long. The houses are all built up on bluffs that surround the small cove of ocean, and so when you stand on the patio you can see about 15 other houses also built up on the bluffs and then just ocean forever. At night the stars come out and since there is nothing around to swallow them up they are vibrant and sharp and alive.
We arrived back in Lima the next day, and still had three days there before leaving for Iquitos. We did some more exploring and getting a feel for the city; I also did some apartment hunting because I’ll be living in Lima from April 14-May 7, working on my independent study project. 5 of my friends will be living with me, and we found a beautiful apartment one in a very safe and family-friendly part of Mira Flores, about a 30-minute walk or 10-minute cab ride from the central plaza, John F Kennedy Plaza.

Part of me wonders if I liked Lima so much because it’s a big city with English bookstores, American restaurants and upscale grocery stores that carry organic fruit and 30 kinds of cheese. (In Cusco they only sell about 5 types, but they all taste very similar and the most popular kind squeaks in your mouth when you chew it. Hence the name, squeaky cheese.) In any event, it is a big city and even though it doesn’t have all the amenities of New York or Boston or Los Angeles, it is relatively easy to simulate an American style of life there. Part of me feels like I’m taking the easy way out: spending my last month here living with 5 American friends, cooking my own meals, reading English books. Am I getting the most out of this experience if I live like that? And I suppose that’s really the challenge of the next month: to take it upon myself to make my experience as real as possible. (And what does that mean—making an experience real? What is “real” Peruvian, anyway? If anyone has suggestions about answering this, please let me know. That’s a big part of what my independent study project is about: trying to decipher what is “authentic Peruvian food” versus food that has been so changed by globalization that it’s not really “authentic” anymore.) I can, and probably will, live in America for the rest of my life; I may as well take advantage of this incredible good fortune I have to be visiting Peru on this program. So, I suppose, at the end of this rambling and indulgent paragraph, I will say: stay tuned for my (hopefully) authentic Peruvian experience in Lima. First, though, down the Amazon, to the jungle and back.

And now, to bed.