We have never been great fans of the group meals that are usually included in these organised tours. The tour may seem better value if it includes meals but the food is never particularly adventurous. We were therefore quite pleased that our tour of Peru only included about half of our meals as this allowed us to go out in search of local specialities.

Carachama fish being sold in Iquitos market. We ate this primitive cat fish during our night in the jungle.

Having said that, the group meals that were provided were, in general, pretty good and to our delight actually included some of the local Peruvian specialities. For example, when we were walking through the market in Iquitos we were told that the primitive carachama fish (shown in our picture) was a speciality of the Amazon. So we were thrilled when it was served up to us for our dinner in the jungle lodge the same evening - and it really was rather tasty. Another local fish we had the opportunity to try was during our stay at Lake Titicaca when we were served killifish, which is one of the indigenous fish from the lake. However it was a bit tasteless - the local trout, which we also had, was much nicer.

A basket of frogs legs that we saw being freshly prepared in Cusco’s market.

Whenever our meals weren’t being provided on the tour, we did our best to find Peruvian specialities in the local restaurants and we occasionally succeeded. In Cusco, we had anticuchos which are shish kebabs made from beef hearts. Heart is usually quite a tough meat but these were unbelievably tender and quite delicious. This was actually a starter and the restaurant was extremely generous with their starters so we couldn’t finish our main course of pizza. As we were leaving this restaurant, we were given the pizza that we hadn’t eaten to take away even though we hadn’t asked for it. This obviously happens a lot at this restaurant as our “doggy bag” was immediately spotted by a young Peruvian boy when we left the restaurant and he came up to us rubbing his tummy. Without a second thought, we gave him our left over pizzas as we didn’t really fancy it for breakfast anyway!

Another speciality dish we had was alpaca. This is the meat from one of the llama family (that is also famous for its soft wool). This meat was also very tender but we didn’t particularly like it as it had a strange flavour that we thought was probably added during the cooking (but it could have been the meat).

On the vegetable front, asparagus is a speciality of the Peru (particularly around Ica). We had it a number of times as a starter with meals and it was delicious. The Peruvian corn is also worth a mention because it is absolutely enormous. The kernels grow up to an 1" across and come in a wide variety of colours including black and red. We tried some of this but it isn’t as nice as the smaller yellow sweetcorn that we love.

Breakfast was provided for us each morning and was generally pretty good. Most of the hotels we stayed in served a buffet breakfast which usually included cut local fruit, yoghurt, cereal, scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, toast, bread rolls, ham, cheese, fruit juice and tea or coffee.

Cuy (Guinea Pig)
We love to try out the local specialities when we are in a foreign country and we are particularly keen to try out food that is not generally available back home. So, when we found out that one of the Peruvian specialities was guinea pig, we were eager to sample it for ourselves as we have never tasted this animal before.

Guinea pigs ready for roasting in a Pisac bakery

Guinea pig is called “Cuy” in Peru and it is a speciality of the highland regions of the Andes. We first spotted it in Cusco where quite a few of the restaurants around the main Plaza de Armas featured it on their menus. In general, we found that the food in Peruvian restaurants was very cheap. However, in Cusco, this local speciality cost about three times as much as the other main courses which made it relatively expensive - but as this was still only about £8 ($13) we were still eager to try it out. This price hike was almost certainly a tourist rip-off though as we found that Cuy cost about the same as the other main courses (about £2.50/$4.50) when we reached Arequipa later on in our tour - but, of course, we didn’t know this at the time!

Guinea pigs running freely around a house in Ollantaytambo

We ordered just one roasted guinea pig between us. This was partly as a precaution if one of us didn’t like it but mainly to maximise the number of different dishes we could try in the limited number of meals we were going to have in Peru. We had seen some guinea pigs running around in an elaborate enclosure in a Pisac bakery and also some “free-range” guinea pigs running around a house in Ollantaytambo and it was hard to imagine these relatively small balls of fur making a very filling main course. We had absolutely no idea what it was going to look like when it was served up either and it was quite a surprise when it arrived laid out whole on a sizzling platter complete with its legs and head and surrounded by assorted vegetables. It was considerably larger than we were expecting because it was about twice the size of the guinea pigs we had seen running around. It measured about 12" (30cm) from its tail to its pointy rodent teeth and it has to be said that it looked so much more like a large rat than a guinea pig - but then if we didn’t mind eating guinea pig we could hardly object to eating rat could we?

The roasted cuy was almost black as it had been very well cooked. Despite its name, the guinea pig is not related in any way to the farm animal but, by sheer coincidence, the meat did actually taste like pork and its crispy skin was like pork crackling! It really tasted quite nice but it did take a very long time to eat as getting the meat off the ribs and legs was quite labour intensive. We were very tempted to try out the cheaper cuy in Arequipa to see if it too looked like rat but we ended up choosing something that was quicker to eat instead!

Where to eat in Peru:
In Lima, there is a street lined with restaurants which leads off the west side of the central park in the Miraflores district. In Cusco and Arequipa, the tourist restaurants are mostly around the main Plaza de Armas in each city.