Lima Food Tours and Cooking Classes

Surquillo Nº 2, on Jr. Leonardo Barbieri, is where the tours go now. It is smaller and less photogenic than its closed neighbour and it is a real market: fish in the morning, the yellow chillies, the potato stalls, the fruit sellers who will cut things open for you.

Mercado Central, in Barrios Altos, is the historic one. Its origins go back to a decree of 1846 and a market opened in 1852; the building burned down on 28 February 1964 and the present one opened on 8 July 1967, with around 950 stalls. It sits next to Barrio Chino, Lima's Chinatown, which formed on Calle Capón from the 1850s and is the reason chifa exists.

Chorrillos fishing market appears in a couple of itineraries and is the early morning option: boats landing, auctions, and the fish that will be ceviche by lunchtime.

We are not publishing opening hours for any of them, because no source we trust publishes them and the ones circulating contradict each other. Go in the morning, and if a market is the reason you booked, let the guide handle the timing.

Official guidance on Lima is specific in a way it usually is not, and it names the districts these tours use, so we are going to quote it rather than soften it.

British government advice states that attacks can take place in tourist areas of Lima such as Miraflores and Barranco, and describes theft and robbery as a significant problem. It also warns about express kidnapping, in which victims are taken to cash machines, generally at night, and about unlicensed taxi drivers at the airport.

The consistent, actionable part is the taxi advice: book by app or by telephone, and do not hail a car on the street. That single habit removes most of the risk that visitors actually encounter.

None of this is a reason to avoid Lima, which is a large capital with the ordinary problems of one. It is a reason to arrive with the taxi question already solved, and to be more careful with a phone at night than you would be in Porto.

At the top, a ceviche class at 220 EUR, three and a bit times the median of 66, with 17 reviews. We cannot tell you it is not worth it; we can tell you it is a very small sample at a very high price in a category where the 52 EUR class has 1,507 reviews and a 5.0 rating.

At the bottom, 18 EUR buys a mini chocolate workshop, and 30 buys a longer bean-to-bar one. Both are at a chocolate museum in Miraflores, both are genuinely enjoyable, and neither is a Peruvian cooking class. They are filed here because they are hands-on food experiences, and they are the two cheapest things in the country's catalogue by a wide margin.

The value on this page sits between 44 and 66 EUR, where the market walks and the well reviewed classes both live, and where the two most reviewed products in Peru are found.

Several listings advertise a fruit tasting, and one promises 35 varieties. In most cities that would be padding. In Lima it is one of the more memorable hours available, because the Peruvian coast and the Amazon between them produce fruit that does not travel and that you will not have met.

Lúcuma, dry and maple-flavoured, which Peruvians put in ice cream rather than eating fresh. Chirimoya, the custard apple. Granadilla, a passion fruit relative with a shell you crack like an egg. Aguaymanto, the physalis. Pacay, a metre-long pod containing sweet white pulp around the seeds, sometimes called ice cream bean.

It is also the part of a market tour where the vendors do the teaching, which is worth more than any guide's summary.