Maido
Maido is Lima’s most famous “Nikkei” style restaurant. Nikkei cuisine is the food of the Peruvian Japanese. Is 500 years long enough for food to stop being “fusion” and become its own thing? Peru has been home to Japanese and Chinese immigrants since the 1500’s and has embraced both cuisines and integrated them into Peruvian cuisine.
Maido is another one of the “Top 50 Restaurants” in Lima, and is just a few blocks from where we’re staying. It has a calm Japanese feel inside, and diners are greeted with a shouted “Maido!” as they enter. There is a traditional sushi bar and tables under a hanging forest of rope.
The dishes are all either Peruvian with Japanese influence like the Poda Cebiche, or Japanese with Peruvian influence like the Gindara Misoyaki with toasted brazil nuts. All of them were technically excellent and artfully presented. The sudado, a traditional Peruvian “sweated fish” soup served bubbling in a hot iron pot (“nabe”) was a standout. The two desserts showcased the two main types of Theobroma. Cacao, well known for chocolate, and Bicolor or macambo, the less well known brown and white cousin. The macambo was by far the more interesting of the two, including a sweet savory salty smoky plantain and shoyu!
