Hi, I'm Ricardo Martins. I'm a chef here in Lima, Peru.

I run a restaurant in Barranco called Siete.

We serve contemporary Peruvian food with local ingredients.

You should come by and try our short ribs

or scallops or even the cheese tart.

But I wasn't always a chef.

I first studied music,

and then anthropology.

Do you know that I even wrote my thesis in college

on how food gave us a national identity in Peru?

I really love Lima.

I love how we all understand this organized chaos.

I love the sound of the waves

crashing against the shore,

and I love the smell of sofrito at noon

where every single house in the city is starting to make lunch.

Let me introduce you to the flavors of my town.

Let me show you my Lima.

Now let's talk about influences.

Spanish, Native Peruvian, Chinese, Afro-Peruvian, Japanese,

this diverse blend of cultures have shaped Peruvian life.

Just take a look around.

You will see the Spanish influences in our main plazas and buildings.

This is the Plaza San Martin.

This is actually the center of Lima.

I love this place a lot.

You can feel the history in the architecture.

Right in the middle of this modern bustling city,

you'll be surprised to find La Huaca Pucllana,

an ancient archeological site built before the Incas.

Overlooking the site is a high-end restaurant

that features contemporary Peruvian cuisine.

Lima never ceases to surprise me.

I'm having a beautiful dinner next to an archeological site

that's been here already 1300 years.

You can even taste Indigenous influences in the street food.

Near Plaza San Martin, I bought corn on the cob with cheese -

what we call Choclo Con Queso with some chili with huacatay.

Wow, it was fantastic.

Barrio Chino,

as we know it, is in the historic center of Lima.

It's one of South America's largest Chinatowns.

The first Chinese immigrants moved to Lima 200 years ago.

Their spices, their techniques have shaped Peruvian cuisine in an important way.

Chifa is a Chinese and Peruvian cuisine.

There are some of the qualities that make it really Peruvian.

The chilis on the table, the yellow chili peppers.

You have the lemon with chicharon, for example,

that combination which is really, really Peruvian.

This is guinea pig -

deep fried guinea pig with sweet & sour, and salted sauce.

We eat guinea pig in the mountains and some parts of the coast.

I've never seen it in Chinese food,

and I think it's very good.

One country that's had an enormous influence on Peruvian food is Japan.

Ever since Japanese immigrants arrived in Peru over a hundred years ago,

they have created an unique kind of fusion called Nikkei.

Maido is among the best restaurants in the world.

Something really interesting about this because

you have cod from Peru,

tempura, Japanese,

and then you have potatoes with ramen.

This is outstanding, outstanding!

It's this diverse blend of cultures

that have helped shape the unique landscape of Peruvian life.

Walking around Lima, you see it and taste it.

Now, let's talk about Peruvian ingredients.

The best way to first understand Lima's culinary scene is

to know the geography.

Lima is a city that sits on the ocean behind the Andes and the Amazonian forests.

I'm going to show you how this market, Mercado de Surquillo,

you can find a vast variety of produce from the jungle to the mountains

to the coast.

If we talk about the mountains,

look at these native potatoes.

Beautiful. Look at the colors.

Here we have cocona.

This is from the jungle.

It's a very special, very acidic fruit.

Mariela knows me since I was a little kid.

What's nice over here is she works with seafood.

Peru's ocean is so rich and diverse.

This is a bull crab.

It is super flavorful.

You can make a bisque.

Here we have the heads and the body of the giant squid.

It's called pota.

It's going to have mussels, razor clams,

normal clams, baby clams, shrimps.

This is why it's so special here.

You have small shops where you get a few things and you get the best.

Finally, the flavors.

Sabor!

My favorite restaurant in Lima is Rafael -

what we call Peruvian contemporary cuisine.

It has been around for over 20 years,

and it's always evolving, evolving, evolving.

Wow.

For me, this restaurant means the fun of cooking.

It speaks to Peruvian flavor that it puts them

in a context of a refined and worldwide perspective.

You know, they play along with Italian cuisine,

Indian cuisine,

Mediterranean,

and that's beautiful too, you know?

For hundreds of years, we have enjoyed a mixture of Spanish

and Indigenous dishes that we all call Comida Criolla.

A great place to try Comida Criolla is Isolina.

This is food that we get on our table at home -

traditional criollo food.

This was my grandpa's favorite dish,

Papa Rellena.

This is a potato stuffed with a meat stew.

We have a Lomo Saltado, which is a stir fried sirloin steak.

The great thing of this dish is the strength of the smoke, the smokiness of the stir fry.

When you think of Peruvian food, the most iconic dish will always be ceviche.

Don Fernando sums up what I love about ceviche -

freshness and tradition.

We're here with two brothers, the two Fernandos.

For me, probably among the best ceviches in the world.

Ceviche is raw marinated seafood with lime and spices.

This is magic.

This is a chili from the north, a jimochero.

It's like, Wow!

Wow, this is great!

The fish is so fresh that it melts in your mouth.

It's spicy.

It has a kick. It surprises you.

If you come to the market, you have to try this.

You know, you have ceviche? The juice of that dish is called Tiger's Milk, leche de tigre.

It's like a mini version of ceviche but with deep fried squid.

Spicy, fresh, beautiful.

It's hard to say exactly what makes Peruvian food so special.

Is it our geography,

our history,

our love for cooking?

Wherever I went and whoever I asked, people had something to say.

We have a lot of cultures, flavors.

Everything is around food.

We have like the most incredible diversity

from the coast to the jungle

in these specific ecospheres we find around Peru.

And that's something that we are really, really thankful for.

Now that I give you a taste of my Lima

I hope to see you soon. Ciao!

Thanks for watching Lonely Planet.

For more videos of this from around the world

like and subscribe.