One crazy food, ceviche and pig. They're actually super good in Peru. It's a little weird because the pigs like never really cooked so it's kind of a risk to go out and eat it but I mean you gotta eat your pork. Ceviche, it's just uncooked fish and they just give it to you and they put a lot of limes on it and lemons but super good.
Around Easter time they, the Peruvians try to eat a lot of, they eat a lot of fish and this one time someone gave me a soup that had fish eggs in it. It was like the consistency of nerds inside of a squishy, I don't even know how to explain it, but it was so horrifying to eat. I will never forget that. Don't ever get it. Just don't.
I thought I was going to have tacos and burritos, tortillas, and stuff like that. They don't even have tortillas down there. Taco in Peru means shoe heel. And torta, among Mexican Americans, is a type of Mexican sandwich. But in Peru, torta is a type of cake. They have usually an entrada, an entree dish, or an introductory dish before you get the main course. And sometimes they'll even have a third or a dessert, a postre. Peruvian food is delicious. A lot of white rice, a lot of meat or beans and sauce, and potatoes. But be careful for the soup with the chicken feet. You might have to prepare yourself for that.
They have like ceviche and ceviche basically is where you take like fish and you just use limes and the lime will like cook the fish Which is it sounds kind of weird, but it's awesome. They would let us eat ceviche that was octopus octopus signature, which I've never had octopus before but it was amazing. So definitely recommend It's kind of a crazy food, not really crazy, but because some people like octopus, but I've never had octopus before but it's amazing
An area called Tacna, it's a big city in Arequipa, they have a food called picante la tacneña where during a war with Peru and Chile, Peruvians they ran out of meat and so what they would do is they would get the intestines of the cows that were dead and mix it with a bunch of spices and then eat it and it's horrible but it became a tradition where they still make it and so it's just like kind of cow innards mixed with a bunch of like spicy sauce and I hated it, I did not like it but my family gave it to us once a week in Tacna so maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't but that's my experience with picante la tacneña.
One time, I ate intestines in a soup. Really weird texture, but I remember liking it quite a bit. Kind of gross, but it's a delicacy there.
A lot of people will think that as Peruvians we eat guinea pig or kuih, but we don't do it really often, just everyone just thinks they would do it every day. I never tried it personally, but they all say that they just taste, they just, that just tastes like chicken and yeah, it's kind of crazy. Some people eat that, they eat that. I never tried it, my mom did it, but I didn't do it, but they say it just is good, but I will personally never eat it.
They do serve cow liver and cow intestine. Cow liver, I believe, is called hígado and intestine is called mondongo. I was served ceviche de pollo or chicken ceviche, but they didn't cook it all the way through. With that one, they're supposed to grill the chicken and then do the ceviche process. So be careful if they say ceviche de pollo because that could be really sketchy. I was sick for several days. They also do ceviche de octopus. So if you don't like octopus, beware.
One of the craziest foods I ate while in Peru, it's called Cuy and it's basically just guinea pig. It's a guinea pig that's different than the ones that we have as pets. They raise them to be eaten, they raise them to be as part of their food, but these guinea pigs they're usually just deep fried. The one that I ate was literally just a deep fried guinea pig. I had the whole thing, I had the whole head, had the eyeballs still. A kid in my group ate one of the eyeballs and he went to town on the head. I just had a little piece of like, I don't think it was the leg or something like that. Pretty crazy, but it just tasted like chicken, just tastes like meat. Another crazy food I ate while in Peru was alpaca. It's something, I mean it tastes just like steak basically. It looked like steak, it was chewy like steak. It was extra salty than the one we had so I would recommend not putting as much salt on it, but I mean it's just another thing that we wouldn't eat here in the States.
In southern Peru, like by Arequipa and also like Cusco and Puno, they eat these things that's called chuño. Basically, up in the Andes mountains, they take some potatoes and they bury them and like freeze dry them a little bit and then they take them out after a while and then boil it. And it's just a potato, but it's pretty weird tasting. It's kind of gross. So if you're ever out there, look out for some chuño and get some ketchup or something.
In the Chincha area, they had the opportunity to eat cat. Now that is not normal for the Peruvian people. That is a delicacy, a dish popular to a small part of the Chincha community.
My first meal when I went to Peru, they gave us cow heart. They serve like chicken organs and chicken legs in soup sometimes. On the streets they have tripe, so I mean that's like grilled intestines and stuff like that. There's this other thing called tokush, and what it is is they ferment a potato and they kind of make a pudding out of it afterwards. And it smells like a barn, like it smells really disgusting, but if when you eat it it's actually pretty sweet. It's like kind of a sugary pudding of some sort, but there's definitely a lot of foods you can try in Peru and it's definitely at least something you can cross off the bucket list.
One thing about Peru that is both kind of a blessing and not so much a blessing is that most of the food you're going to eat is very repetitive and so they have about a thousand different ways to make the exact same thing which is chicken and rice. You'll have chicken and rice almost every day for both lunch and dinner. Now there may be some variation, maybe they'll throw some beef in there for something, but for the most part it's going to be pretty the same. However, every so often you may be in an area where they'll serve you an entire deep fried whole guinea pig with the head on it and everything. And so I had the chance to eat this once and I remember looking at it going hmm that's an interesting looking thing and but then actually getting into some of the meat and trying it and it was actually pretty good. As cliche as it sounds, it actually did taste like chicken and so there was just yet another way to eat chicken and rice.