Discovering the Best Street Food in Lima Peru 🇵🇪

Wow this is my kind of pastry. This is the real deal. It's really good. Wow. Subscribe to follow along. Hello we are still in Lima. If you've watched our last video you'll know that we explored Miraflores and Barranca. We haven't yet been into the downtown area of Lima until now in this video. We are currently in the historic center of Lima and we are going to be doing a food tour with We actually did a tour with them in Arequipa already which was amazing. Amazing. So we wanted to do one with them in Lima. So we're very excited to try some more Peruvian food and explore this area of Lima because it kind of feels like a different city and it is bumping right now. I met our guide Marcus over here with Exquisitos Peru. About to begin. Let's go. We're here at Domino's which is a restaurant. Our first stop that has been here since 1958. Let's go. Okay so this is the official drink here in Peru. It's Chilcano which is ginger ale, lime and then pisco and it's excellent. We've had it before. It is refreshing. Oh man this is like up there with one of my favorite drinks. It has to be. That's nice. So because I'm gluten-free I can't have the dish that is served but they got me something else which is called sotelito I believe and it's a traditional salad they have here with beans and corn and olives and cheese and it looks delicious. All right so we've had this sauce many times before. Huancaina. It's the famous, very important to Peruvian gastronomy, yellow pepper but it smells amazing. It's got a bit of spice, a bit sweet, used for tons of stuff and so you add some crackers which is why Devin can't have it but onions and garlic and gosh. How about some water in it? It's good stuff. Yeah very very nice, very smooth. So we're just walking along before our next food location and our guide Marcus is so knowledgeable. One thing he was just telling us which is really interesting is there are 33 million people here in Peru. The entire country. And in Lima specifically 11 million. So like a third of the country lives here in Lima. That's ridiculous. Wow. This is Unity Street which we're walking down right now in the center of Lima, the centro historico and it's quite busy I gotta say. There are actually 14 UNESCO world heritage sites in Peru and historical center Lima is one of them and the reason is because the architecture in that square right there, there are three different types of architecture like different styles and different periods of time so that's really neat like everywhere you look is a different style of architecture. For our next stop we have tamales and coffee which is very exciting because you know we love coffee and so our tamale is chicken and it's corn-based so I can have it. Tamale technically the word comes from Mexico but they also have them here in Peru so I'm very excited to try it because I can eat it. The ones here in Peru are different. They're bigger and we learned they're more like condensed and it does seem like it's big. Keith might be eating a lot of food today because I might get full. It's really good. Wow. Yeah? I like it. So Madison over here said that it tastes like polenta and it reminds her of polenta and I agree but I think this is even better than polenta because it's got, I mean I don't, I'm not a huge fan of polenta. It's more flavorful. It's more flavorful and he was saying, Marcus was saying that there's chicken broth in there and I think that's what I like a lot is that flavor that's coming out. Okay. Also this coffee is fantastic I gotta say. The last sip of coffee. God damn. As we're leaving. This is the last sip. We did well though. We all eat all of our food. By the way apparently there's like six more stops and I feel like we've already had a meal. There's a lot of food on this tour and drinks. So one thing I've never thought about and Marcus is just telling us really knows everything, really informed. Those balconies for example, the buildings, some of them have the Spanish and like Moorish look to them, right? Like the Moors in southern Spain back in like year 800 but also that means that the Moors influenced the gastronomy, like the food, like biryani and even empanadas. Empanadas actually have their origins from Arab food which blows my mind because to me empanadas are South American. So there's like three fruit vendors here trying to sell grapes and avocados and they all have megaphones announcing that they're selling dragon fruit avocados or grapes. And they're all within 10 feet of each other. Very smart. I kind of like got used to it and I kind of like it. That was kind of wild. It was so loud. It's just so different here than where we spent, like where we were in our last video. And where we've been in Peru altogether as well. There's so much diversity in Peru. Yeah it's really wild. Hectic place here downtown Lima but it's cool. Lima has so much diversity. So now we're entering what's called Central Market. We're gonna have some more food. You can buy everything here by the way. There's like stores for hats and Christmas stuff. He said there's stores for literally everything and it's kind of like wholesale. So each place is specific for the specific product. So we're going to the food area. Love these. Aguaymanto or like golden berry or gooseberry. I think. I love it. So nice. She always inhales her food. That's not how you eat food. It's good. Prickly pear or tuna. We've had this before. It's good. It's got really big seeds in it but the color is so beautiful. It's a good one. And now the white dragon fruit or pitahaya. Have we had this yet? I don't think so. It's really nice. It's sweeter than the red one. And last but not least, chirimoya which we've had before and it's quite good. One of my favorite things honestly for somewhere new and somewhere kind of tropical is trying fruit. It's just so fun. Just like bubblegum to me. But it's just so good. Okay we're now entering Chinatown and we have not seen this kind of proud busyness since we've been in... Probably since India. Yeah since India. And I gotta say it is it's packed. Look at the crowd. All directions. So we're here in a Chinese restaurant having a quick little dumpling with soy sauce. Devin can't have this obviously because there's gluten in it. That's okay. I'll eat hers. The reason why we're here is because Peru has got a huge Chinese influence especially in the food. So before it leaks everywhere on me, I better eat it. So after the U.S. and Canada, Peru has got the most Chinese immigrants. It's pretty interesting. It's so slippery. Funny enough it never rains in Peru but it's drizzling a little bit and so the streets are so slippy. We're turning. That was a really good dumpling by the way. Now we're on to Peruvian food again. Okay so here we have our next spot okay. Cool. This one we do anticucho. Anticucho. Yeah remember anticucho? Have you tried? Have you not? I don't think so. Well the anticucho is beef heart. Oh. Beef heart. We have not had beef heart. That will be our next dish. Okay. In this case the beef heart is seasoning in panca chili. Okay that is a special spice that we have similar like a paprika. We marinate that beef heart for 24 hours a whole day and then we grill with the same seasoning. This is anticucho which is a typical Peruvian street food. It's beef heart and it's a bit spicy supposedly. Grilled here. Looks nice though. I've had chicken heart before. I don't know if I've had beef heart before. Usually chicken heart's tender and I like it. Spicy? Like steak. Chewy though. Smoky? Yeah it's not bad. It's not bad. Devon's kind of afraid so she's not gonna have any. Okay we're making our way through traffic. It's crazy busy. These buses are full. We're playing chicken with these vehicles. There's I guess the traffic control officer and lights but that doesn't really do anything. Oh wow. What a... This guy's carrying massive bags of rice or something. Wow. Wow. That was busy. Big city vibes and we're small town folk. So that was a mobile bakery. I actually just bought a few pitas for tomorrow. Another Arab influence here in Lima. The pita bread. Fresh off the mobile bakery. So it turns out the square we started in this morning is the second most important square and this that we're walking into right now is the main square and it is beautiful. Keith's sandwich and lime. We are in a restaurant called El Tinito. Now it's a famous place I really wanted to go to the other day but we didn't because Devon wanted to go somewhere else. We went to the soup place. We went to the soup place. It's really good but we're here which is really amazing. We're having the chicharron sandwich. Pan con chicharron which also includes sweet potato at the bottom. We have like a red pepper sauce which I'll dip it in and then some onions and cilantro. All right here it goes. A little dip. Okay come on let's go. I can't eat it. Hiccup. See I ate too fast. I swallowed too fast I got a hiccup. Excellent. Perfectly salty and perfectly crunchy with the bread. Fresh bread. Highly approved. I'm very happy we stopped here. This is excellent. So I've got the pork with the sauce and the sweet potato. I'm really excited to try this. It's really good. It's really good and with the onions and the final bite. This has been outstanding. So this cathedral behind me here is the biggest cathedral in Peru. Saint John Evangelist Cathedral. What's neat about it is all the different types of architecture. They actually like built new and took down old parts that were renaissance architecture and then put on neoclassical at the time in the late 1700s. Inside the altar there's baroque and then neo-gothic and then also some parts of it built in the 1940s is neo-colonial revival like these wooden balconies here. So a lot of different types and that's what makes this whole place fascinating because the architecture is all over the place and we're learning all this on a food tour which is great. All right I'm going to try this churro. Oh my gosh apparently there is caramel milk inside it. Marcus this is good. What happened? This is really good. It's kind of like a beaver tail like we mentioned without too much cinnamon and then with the core that is caramel milk. Wow this is this is my kind of pastry. I know it's not the same ones. This is called chapana. Okay I guess the chapana is yucca. It's a cassava dessert mixing with you call it okay what we call here a chancaca or in this case rock candy. Okay it's a very old and very traditional dessert but until now we saw it in cake and also use it as a ingredient because it's actually very sweet. Interesting. It's cool. What's it like? That's the word interesting. It reminds me of something honestly kind of like pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie? Yeah but like more squishy. Yeah. We're back in the main square here the plaza. Big statement coming in that was my favorite pastry in the country. One of my favorite pastries ever like sweet dessert pastries out of this world. Yeah. Also we were just talking and we have been in Peru for a month and most of the food that we've had tonight we haven't had yet so it's like unique foods which is really awesome. Quite unique and then really good food stops. We have eaten a lot. Amazing. We're just now walking around the main square I feel like getting more and more into where people are eating. You're right. What's really cool about this church behind me is it is the oldest created the oldest university in the Americas started in 1650 St. Marcus University and it's still running today. Also it's a beautiful cathedral church that was just renovated this year so that's We've been in another very loud area with shows, performers, street food vendors and lots of stuff going on. Sometimes there's like theater here but now there's dances. Okay here I have the final dessert. I have picarones which is the Peruvian donuts if you will made with sweet potato and honestly the process is amazing. She's like whipping it out with her hand no problem throwing in the oil. Very much a skill to have and I have a masa mora because I can't have it because there's flour in there but awesomely there's another street food dessert that I can have which is like rice pudding with chichimora. The purple corn with apple and pineapple skin, cinnamon, cloves and then the potato starch rice pudding at the bottom. I'm gonna try it. We've had it once sometime. It was on our Rainbow Mountain morning tour. Rainbow Mountain morning tour. And this is way better. It's good? Let me see. This is the real deal. Holy smokes this is amazing. I kind of want some too. Yeah okay here you go. You didn't give me any sauce. Yeah I did. Oh wow that is good. Holy smokes. Yeah. That's delicious we should make that at home. Amazing. Okay here goes the donut with flour unfortunately for Devin and Yuka. Okay this lady knows what's up. Is it good? These are excellent. They're greasy but like airy not too dense. The sauce is not too sweet but quite good. Delicious. Well that's a wrap. That concludes the end of our Lima food tour slash learning about Lima the historical center. Wow. That was amazing. Yeah we learned tons of stuff as well on top of all of the amazing food stops that were out of this world and food that we had not had. Yeah it was incredible. We would totally recommend Exquisitos Peru. Links below. Marcus was our guy and he was awesome. It was amazing. We hope you enjoyed this video and all the food we tried. Hopefully not too hungry. And we'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching. The ceiling's pretty low here. How do I look though? Kind of dorky I imagine. Your new haircut's nice. Yeah that's the one thing I got going for me.