LA GLORIA; FINA ESTAMPA Daniel Hannan
PERUVIAN cuisine is without doubt the most underrated in the world. Auguste Escoffier ranked it third behind only French and Chinese. It is difficult to match for taste, subtlety or diversity. Yet it is almost unknown outside Peru. Walk down any British high street and you will find Thai, Greek, Indian and Mexican food. But you will search in vain for a decent bit of papa a la huancaina or chupe de camarones.
Part of the problem is that visitors to Peru usually come to see the Inca remains. Keen to push on to Cusco and Machu Pic- chu, they rarely linger in Lima which, remarkable as it may seem, is a gastronomic paradise. Those who do stay are often put off trying the costa cuisine by well-meaning locals who tell them that it is extremely spicy. I can only assume that Lima formed its impression of the English palate during the 1950s, when it was home to thousands of Lancashire textile workers raised, per- haps, on fish and chips. For the modern Englishman, brought up on vindaloo, Peru- vian food is delicately piquant without being hot. The only thing to watch out for is roco- to, a powerful chilli which, when sliced, looks dangerously like a tomato.
For the last couple of years La Gloria has been generally acknowledged as the best place to eat in Lima. It is unusually small for a Peruvian restaurant, its walls painted in colonial colours and hung with the vaguely Cubist pictures which are so char- acteristic of modern Peruvian art. Like many Lima restaurants, it serves dishes which would strike a Peruvian as interna- tional but which, to a foreigner, are unmis- takably Peruvian. The combination of cre- ole recipes with modern European forms of preparation and presentation is common in Lima, and the results are generally happy. In La Gloria's case, there is a heavy Mediterranean influence which perfectly complements the local ingredients.
Every Peruvian meal should begin with a pisco sour. Pisco is the national drink: a strong, clear brandy traditionally served with frothed egg-white, crushed ice, lime juice and syrup. Ordering a couple of these will give you time to study La Gloria's extensive menu, some of whose entries are positively lyrical. I wondered whether the desafiantes conchas a la mantequilla de limon y ajo crocante ('defiant scallops with lemon butter and crunchy garlic') could possibly taste as poetic as they sounded. They did. When serving good scallops, the temptation must be to let their flavour speak for itself, rather than shouting it down with an overpowering dressing. But these conchas were so large, so strong, so (there is no other word) defiant, that even a heavy dollop of garlic served to enhance rather than mask their taste. My compan- ion, Graham, a pillar of the Anglo-Peru- vian business community, ordered octopus salad which he, too, pronounced a success- ful blend of vigour and subtlety.
Sticking with the magniloquent names, I moved on to the arroz untuoso a la cerveza, coronado con sabrosa pierna de pato braseada. This one is trickier to translate. One can hardly describe rice as `unctuous'; but then 'oily', 'sticky' and 'greasy' don't really fit the bill either. Anyway, it came cooked in beer and coriander and served with leg of duck. This was a modern version of the traditional Peruvian dish arroz con pato, with risotto deliciously substituted for the usual rice. Graham, a habitué of the London restaurant scene, had oxtails in red 'Have you been sniffing Tipp-Ex again?' wine and declared them to be the best available on either side of the Atlantic.
Pud is something that Peruvians take seriously. They have an incorrigibly sweet tooth, and are especially fond of dishes based on caramel or rnanjarblanco, which is perhaps best known here as the filling for banoffee pie. In some restaurants, pudding is served exclusively by black waitresses, often dressed in white cotton shifts and tur- bans. This plays on an ancient association in the Peruvian mind between black people and sugar estates. I ordered lucuma mousse with a chocolate base. Lucuma is a fruit so quintessentially Peruvian that I've never been able to find out whether it has an English name. Lucuma ice cream is, so to speak, the Peruvian vanilla: the default option. It works as mousse, too. Graham had strawberries seasoned, unusually, with red wine, cinnamon and green pepper. With two bottles of Chilean Concha y Torro, ordered in celebration of General Pinochet's release, and some brandy, the bill came to a very reasonable 650 soles — around £110.
If I have somehow failed to persuade you to fly to Lima, you can nonetheless taste passable Peruvian food in London. Fina Estampa, named after a popular folk song, is unfortunately situated. Lying slightly downriver from the London Dungeon, it understandably has problems attracting people at night. Its appearance, too, is unprepossessing, with walls draped in the kind of tourist tat you picked up during your gap year. And, instead of playing good marineras or valses, it assaults you with the Gipsy Kings.
So much, perhaps, is forgivable. The inability to make a proper pisco sour is not. And yet, for all this, Fina Estampa does come up with some remarkably plausible Peruvian food. Ceviche is one of the very few Latin American dishes to have pene- trated the British consciousness. When badly made, it can be horrible; but mine had just enough lemon to marinade the raw fish properly without completely destroying its flavour, as well as the correct proportion of onions and sweet potato. My companion began with causa rellena: tuna, onion and avocado wrapped in potato. He enjoyed it, although it's rather a cheek to attempt a causa without yellow potato.
We followed with two very traditional dishes: seco de corder°, a lamb stew heavy with coriander, and aji de gallina, shredded chicken in a thick and mildly spicy sauce. Both were successful; indeed, the sew was rather better than you would get in Peru, where lamb tends to be tough. With two decent bottles of Chilean white (' iBuen viaje, General!), the bill came to £65. The one dis- appointment was the lack of any Peruvian pud — there wasn't even lucuma ice cream.
La Gloria, Calle Awhualpa 201, Miraflores, Lima; tel: 00 5114 445 5705.
Fina Estampa, 1501152 Tooley Street, Lon- don SE1; tel: 0207 403 1342.
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