Street Food – Lima

The Peruvian capital’s cuisine combines indigenous and foreign influences.

The Peruvian capital, founded by Spanish conquistadors, has exploded with population influxes from Peru’s own Andean highlands and from abroad, particularly China and Japan.

Today, Lima is home to almost nine million people.

For many years, it was a city of mostly segregated neighbourhoods. But today this is changing – and the change is being led by cuisine.

Lima’s cuisine is gaining worldwide recognition for its freshness and creativity. Its trademark plate, ceviche, combines many different influences and is putting the country on the world’s gastronomical map.

One of Lima’s most popular street food favourites is called ‘five flavours’ – it is a rice and pasta dish with Italian, Chinese, Andean, Japanese and African influences. 

Street Food – Lima ventures into Latin America to uncover the new-found confidence of the Peruvian capital, which is discovering a modern identity through its food and by making the most of its mix of indigenous and foreign.

But it is not all a success story; in the slums of Lima many native Andean people eke out a living, drawing into question how much the mix taking place in Peru’s cuisine is really taking place in society at large.

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