223 Best Restaurants in Peru

Almost completely hidden in a small B&B down a dusty side street between Ica and Huacachina, this criollo restaurant still manages to draw a stream of customers. On the phenomenal menu, all the Peruvian national classics are present, but even better are the hard-to-find Southern Coast favorites like carapulcra with sopa seca (nutty pork-and-potato stew with green pasta), fish with pecan sauce, and beef with butter-bean tacu tacu. The attached guesthouse is so lovely that many diners end up staying the night. You won't find better eats anywhere in southern Peru.

Step through the unassuming doorway on Avenida La Marina, descend the long stairway to the dock, and a boat will ferry you to this floating, thatched-roof restaurant on the Itaya River. The setting is gorgeous, and they prepare excellent versions of traditional dishes such as patarashca (a fish fillet topped with herbs and garlic and roasted in a bijao leaf) and doncella (Amazon catfish) fillet à la loretana (in a mild chili sauce), as well as ample other intriguing favorites. Bring a bathing suit to lounge in the floating pool after your meal.

Ensconced in an elegant casona with a gorgeous carved-stone portal, this delightful café brings a touch of Argentina to northern Peru. The coffee and baked goods, which include Argentine-style empanadas, are scrumptious, but if you're in the mood for something more substantial, the place also dishes up charcuterie boards, pizzas, and pastas. The inner courtyard, with its creeper-entwined trees and gurgling fountain, is a delightful spot to while away an afternoon. 

The family that owns this restaurant pours passion into their business and their excellent food, which is made using local ingredients that are carefully sourced in ways that lend poorer communities a helping hand. To ensure that everyone who walks in gains a little more understanding of Indigenous culture, the specialty here is meat prepared on stones that are full of nutritious, flavor-enhancing minerals. There are also veggie options and a daily menu.

The flagship restaurant of Peru's most celebrated chefs, spouses Gastón Acurio and Astrid Gutsche, occupies a meticulously restored colonial mansion named Casa Moreyra. Dishes are available à la carte, but the big event here is the 16-course, prix-fixe tasting menu, which takes you on a journey through Peru's culinary regions in the span of two hours. The menu changes with the seasons to ensure fresh ingredients, but expect a good mix of meat and seafood, plus a chocolate apocalypse at the end. Reserve tables at least two weeks ahead.

Even if you don't have a reservation, you can try to get a table on the patio, where you can order from the à la carte menu.

Dating from 1905, this venerable Lima institution has served up ham sandwiches and pisco sours to Peru's presidents for over a century. Every inch of the decor—the worn wooden bar, the old black-and-white photos, the well-stocked saloon shelves and cabinets—oozes history. Try the butifarra (marinated pork with zarza criolla, or pickled onions, on a homemade roll), or, if you're famished, the bistec con tacu-tacu (steak with pan-fried rice and beans).

The beach-shack decor at this family-run cebichería leaves no doubt as to the eatery's focus: fresh-caught seafood at budget-friendly prices. You can't go wrong with any of the cebiches or tiraditos, but an even better option is to put together a combo that mixes cebiche with a cooked-seafood dish like chaufa de mariscos (seafood fried rice). Don't overlook the hearty soups redolent of fish, crab, and shrimp: they're among the kitchen's many fortes. In the fierce battle royale that is Lima's restaurant scene, this joint punches way above its weight.

This funky, thatched-roof restaurant with river views in the back has one of Puerto Maldonado's best kitchens, offering up a wide variety of local favorites such as pollo con salsa de castañas (chicken in a Brazil-nut sauce), pescado en hoja (fish fillet cooked in a leaf), or lomo (grilled tenderloin) with tacacho (fried plantain balls) and ensalada de palmito (heart-of-palm salad). The environment is appropriately Amazonian, with Indigenous art on the walls.

Equal parts funky and friendly, this café offers light snacks, hot and cold beverages, free Wi-Fi, and a seemingly endless supply of newspapers and books in English. Warm up by the fireplace on a cold night, or sit on the outdoor terrace with your laptop and sip a fresh-pressed cup of tea.

This laid-back café-bar is the only thing keeping La Casa del Corregidor alive these days. It offers some of the best international food and bar snacks you can find in Puno, as well as a wide variety of craft beers and great coffee drinks. Teas, cocktails, and smoothies—along with sweet treats like cakes and pies—round out the menu. After 9 pm, there's more of a bar scene, with savory food choices like tapas.

This family-run huarique (hole-in-the-wall) is one of the best restaurants not just in Huaraz but in the entire Peruvian sierra. Chef César Rondán knows exactly what the body craves on chilly Andean nights after a long hike: pork belly in fresh herbs, risottos made with quinoa, osso buco in red wine—his comfort-food concoctions never fail to satisfy. More impressive still, even on days when just he and his mother are working, they somehow manage to make everyone feel like guests at a joyous family reunion. Andean food and hospitality at their best.

Dining in this charmingly refitted family home is like dining at Grandpa's house—if Grandpa were an internationally trained grill expert who served only the most exquisite cuts of meat. That's because the steaks, fire-cooked pork, and whole salmon at the sumptuous parrilla (grill) are the best in Ayacucho, with delicious sauces to boot. Sit on the red-tile porch after finishing and gaze up at the chirimoya trees.

Restaurantes populares—dining halls for ordinary folks—offer some of Peru's best eats, and no place better epitomizes this than this wildly popular seafood joint occupying a tiny stall on Paracas's boardwalk. Jhosselyn, the chef, dishes up dangerously fresh jaleas (fried seafood with pickled onions), scallops, and rice plates, with a creamy leche de tigre (cebiche broth) that's out of this world. Particularly impressive are the chupe de pescado and chupe de cangrejo (fish and crab soups, respectively). Visitors to Paracas frequently end up eating every meal here: it's that good.

With a covered courtyard that evokes images of a traditional yet upscale outdoor picantería, the offerings at celeb-chef Gastón Acurio's stylish bistro provide delicious gourmet twists on typical regional fare. Unlike many restaurants offering fusion menus, the plate sizes here are ample. Be sure to begin your dining experience with one of the unique pisco cocktails. Reservations are a good idea.

A labor of love from someone born and raised in Ollantaytambo has resulted in a must-visit restaurant experience—one in which you will savor traditional ancestral foods (from cuy to anticuchos) made with the freshest of local ingredients and prepared to appeal to the foreign palate. The all-wood decor makes for a warm and rustic yet chic atmosphere, with Peruvian accents sprinkled throughout. If you like cocktails, you must try one using Destilería Andina’s artisanal hooch produced, like Chuncho, by the El Albergue family.

Everyone seems to know everyone at this second-floor eatery, part lively tapas bar, part sit-down, candlelit restaurant. The tapas are delicious and varied, while the main dishes offer fabulous Mediterranean cuisine with twists from the Andes. You can order off the restaurant menu in the tapas bar, but not the other way around.

Reservations are very strongly encouraged.

To savor the Andean delicacies that huaracinos eat on special occasions, take a 10-minute taxi ride from downtown to this excellent restaurante campestre (country restaurant) shaded by a trellised arbor. Here you'll find pachamanca (meats and vegetables cooked over coals in a pit), pork cooked in a cylindrical box, and yes, cuy, or guinea pig (it's actually quite delicious). The decor and service are hospitality personified, and the grilling is some of the most exquisite in the city.

Set in a colonial finca (farm house) that dates from 1780, this Lima institution offers some of the heartiest down-home cooking in the entire capital. Criollo classics such as seco de cabrito and costillas de cerdo con tacu-tacu (ribs with pan-fried rice and beans) are especially well done, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a weak spot anywhere on the extensive menu. After 11 pm on weekends, the back room turns into a festive dance hall.

One of the best restaurants in the Cusco region was serving Peruvian fusion before it became trendy, perfecting the art of combining flavors in a way that each one can be savored. You’ll need some time to decide between all the enticing options on the menu; the cuts of meat are amazingly tender, and there are some interesting vegetarian choices as well, not to mention an array of fabulous appetizers that might tempt you to just order a medley.

Had César Vallejo, the great Peruvian poet whose visage gazes out from the photos adorning this popular eatery, been able to order from the kitchen while living in his apartment upstairs, he might not have been so melancholy. The hearty norteño dishes here are the most comforting of comfort foods: stewed goat, duck, pork, and cuy (guinea pig), along with a bevy of belly-warming soups and small plates. The chefs running this decades-old establishment may not be poets, but their recipes show them to be artists all the same. If it's too crowded, there are others branches nearby at Jirón Orbegoso 303 and Avenida España 736.

This exquisite eatery is one of Peru's not-to-be-missed culinary experiences. In 1983, the Solís family began serving modern interpretations of comida norteña out of their home. The business exploded, leading to a chain of top-shelf restaurants in both Chiclayo and Lima. Here, under the aegis of renowned chef Hector Solís, you can try a sumptuous cabrito and arroz con pato, as well as dozens of other local specialties and a long list of trendy, pisco-based cocktails. The restaurant has a Lima branch ( Miraflores, Av. Reducto 1278) that's no less impressive.

This two-story establishment housed in a colonial casona takes Ayacucho dining to another level. As the name indicates, the program here is contemporary Peruvian cooking with plenty of international accents, but in reality, chef Pepe Gamarra uses the fusion angle as a pretext to flaunt his virtuosity with all manner of meats, from Argentine sausage to pork and top sirloin. Traditional favorites such as tallarines a la huancaína con lomo (spaghetti with Huancayo cheese sauce and steak) get a fresh update, but even better are plates like the osso buco with puréed yucca. Gamarra's rosemary potatoes alone are worth the price of admission.

A festival-hall atmosphere and mind-blowing updates of Peruvian classic dishes make this Huancayo institution one of the sierra's best restaurants. The papas nativas con tres uchus (potatoes in three scrumptious sauces) and cordero asado (roast lamb) are like nothing you've had before, and the brightly costumed waiters take joy in introducing the region's cuisine to visitors. The Lima branch ( Av. Javier Prado Este 1405) of this eatery is equally exquisite.

An engaging French-Peruvian couple manage one of the town's best restaurants, whose eclectic decor—think maritime kitsch—is worth a visit on its own. Quiche Lorraine, ginger chicken, and spicy trucha a la macho (trout in hot pepper and wine sauce) are favorites on the Peruvian-French fusion à la carte menu, but the reasonably priced (S/80), prix-fixe, three-course menu is the way to go, offering all the same options plus heavenly homemade bread. It's as good a place for dining with friends as for an intimate dinner for two.

Voted World's Best Female Chef in 2022 by San Pellegrino, Lima-born Pía León is a culinary force to be reckoned with, and this airy bistro right next door to the restaurant Central showcases the full range of her talents. In what amounts to a whirlwind tour of Peru, her nine-course tasting menu fuses ingredients from every corner of the country into inspired, innovative combinations. River shrimp, cacao, different varieties of tubers, sweet cucumbers: the menu whips together whatever happens to excite León in a given month. The result? A brilliant, jazzlike improvisation that serves as a foil to Central's culinary symphony.

Chalaco is an affectionate appellative for natives of Callao, Lima's rough-and-tumble port, and this lively seafood stand is chef Gastón Acurio's love song to the district's culinary heritage. As always, Acurio's genius is evident in the menu's mix of tradition and creative flair: jalea chalaca throws together fried fish, two types of squid, and abundant pickled onions, while the unusual tiradito chucuito combines raw fish, olives, and avocado in a Parmesan-based broth. Don't overlook the piqueos: the seafood empanadas and croquettes are heavenly. At this point, Acurio has shown that when it comes to showcasing the gastronomy of ordinary Peruvians, there's nothing he can't do. 

More a wine bar than a restaurant, La Cantina has walls lined with Italian vintages that are poured by a friendly and attentive staff, creating a setting that invites both sampling and lingering. For your meal, there are delicious pizzas with wafer-thin crusts and high-quality ingredients, plus meats and cheeses from the Old Country and a killer tiramisu for dessert. If the location in the center is full, there's another in the Magisterio neighborhood.

In one corner of the Mercado Central, amid stalls selling charqui (dehydrated meat) and rainbow-colored displays of quinoa, you'll find a lunchtime crowd lining up for cebiche frito, a locally famous fried version of cebiche. Chef Roxana Chávez Mestanza has become a local phenomenon for her invention, which here comes battered and topped with a spicy mayo, along with leche de tigre and all the usual cebiche fixings. You can also combine your cebichito with seafood-fried rice or other marine plates. The restaurant has become so popular, it's opened another branch in the La Colmena neighborhood east of the Plaza de Armas. Patience here is key: remember that authentic local traditions are sometimes worth the wait.

Set along the highway to Cabanaconde near Cruz del Condor and surrounded by ample fields, the Hotel Kuntur Wassi is best known for its excellent organic restaurant. All the food, including meats, is sourced or raised locally. You can go hiking or take a horseback riding tour after your meal.

This reinvention of the traditional cebichería by chef Gastón Acurio is one of Lima's most popular lunch spots. The decor is minimal, but the menu offers a kaleidoscopic selection of delectable seafood dishes, including a trio de cebiches (various types of fish or seafood marinated in lime juice) and delectable causas (mashed-potato appetizers with seafood-and-mayonnaise fillings). Also try the arroz con mariscos (sautéed seafood and rice in a spicy cream sauce) or one of the catches of the day. The servings tend to be large, so you may want to share. The restaurant consistently ranks on San Pellegrino's list of Latin America's 50 best.

Reservations aren't accepted, so arrive before 1 or you'll wait an hour for a table.