Walking Lima (part 2)

In a city with so many great places to eat, drink, and hang, here are the ones I liked

While walking for two weeks in Lima, I ate a lot of ceviche, and drank a lot of Pilsen Callao (sorry, Pilsen is better than the better known Cusqueña, and cheaper).

Because everyone in Lima is hustling, since the city hasn’t been taken over by franchises, you can eat from hundreds of places, each a little different. Stands, stalls, carts, and store fronts all serve food, all made that day, or the night before.

Franchising lowers the risk of what you eat, but by lowering quality. While you know what you are going to get, it will be pretty mediocre.

It also destroys the transcendent. To steal from Walter Benjamin and his “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” getting your hamburger put together in minutes from a chain removes any aura around making and eating food.

That isn’t the case when you are one foot away from three women making ceviche with fish from two fish sellers a stall over.

All of whom get immense pride out of doing it. The dignity of work is an overused phrase, but the meaning that comes from making something special, even if it is “only” ceviche, or Aguadito De Pollo, is a real thing.

So I prefer taking the gamble of having a few bad moments, to find the truly sublime, and in a tiny way, capture part of that aura. I also prefer giving my money to the people doing the creation.

So here are a few of my favorite places, not necessarily all sublime, but all unique and caring. They are not chosen simply because the food or ambiance was great (it almost all was), but because I liked, well, their aura.