Food Tours · Tour

Peruvian Coffee First, Then a Pisco Sour at the Cordano

It starts with coffee, which is unusual and is the right choice. Peru grows a great deal of coffee and exports almost all the good stuff, so most visitors never taste it properly. Cafe Terrua, one block from Kennedy Park in Miraflores, does, and the people there explain what they are pouring. Then the Metropolitano into the centre, which is how Lima actually gets to work. Around the Mercado Central there is a lucuma smoothie, and lucuma is worth arriving with no expectations about: a fruit that tastes like maple and sweet potato and is what Peru puts in ice cream. Chifa appetisers follow in Chinatown, and causa or papa a la huancaina somewhere along the way. The walk carries on past the Congress Palace and finishes around the church of San Francisco with churros, and then a pisco sour at Bar Cordano, which is over a hundred years old, sits next to the Government Palace, and has been a fixture for presidents and writers for most of that time. There is time at the Plaza Mayor for photographs of the Cathedral and the palace before the return to Miraflores. Four hours on foot. Up to fifteen people, in English or Spanish, with the guide, all the tastings, the alcohol and the Metropolitano fare. Comfortable shoes, a hat, sunblock, water, and some local currency if you want a souvenir. Museum entrances are not included.