Eating in Lima Peru, restaurants and bars

Among South American capitals, Lima ranks alongside Rio and Buenos Aires for its selection of places to eat and drink , with restaurants, bars and cafés of every type and size crowding every corner of the city, from expensive hotel dining rooms to tiny set-meal street stalls. Regardless of class or status, virtually all Limeños eat out regularly, and having a meal out usually ends up as an evening's entertainment in itself.

Cafés and snackbars

Bar/Restaurant Machu Picchu , Ancash 312. A busy place opposite San Francisco church in Lima Centro, serving inexpensive snacks; a good spot for meeting up with other travellers. Daily 8am-11pm.

Café Café , Matir Olaya 250. A groovy coffee shop playing good rock music just off Diagonal in downtown Miraflores. Daily 10am-midnight.

Café Haiti , Diagonal 160. The most popular meeting place for middle-class Limenõs, based by the Cinema El Pacifico in the heart of Miraflores; excellent snacks and drinks but expensive. Daily 8am-midnight.

Cordano , Jirón Ancash 202. Beside the Palacio de Gobierno in Lima Centro this is one of the city's last surviving traditional bar/restaurants - very good value, with old-fashioned service. Worth visiting if only to see the decaying late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century decor. Mon-Sat 8am-11pm.

Natur , Moquegua 132. A surprisingly good vegetarian restaurant and lunchtime meeting place right in the heart of Lima Centro, just a couple of blocks from the Plaza San Martin. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm.

Oro Verde , Calle Colon 569. A pleasant, traditional coffee shop attached to the Zona de Arte photographic gallery. Mon-Sat 10am-7pm.

La Tiendecita Blanca , Avenida Larco 111. Another popular meeting place, with a superb range of cakes and pastries, though they are all a bit pricey; located right on the busiest junction in Miraflores. Daily 8am-8pm.

Restaurants

Predictably, Lima boasts some of the best restaurants in the country, serving not only traditional Peruvian dishes, but cuisines from all parts of the world. Seafood is particularly good here, with ceviche - raw fish or seafood marinated in lime juice and served with onions, chillis, sweetcorn and sweet potatoes - being the speciality. Many of the more upmarket restaurants fill up very quickly, so it is advisable to reserve in advance; where this is the case we have included the phone number. All the restaurants listed below are open roughly 10.30am-11pm daily unless otherwise indicated