LIMA 2

Day 74 22.09.15

Yes!! Spa day!! I had been looking forward to this day for a long time now and it had finally arrived :) !

I slept in late, enjoyed some great running internet and then hopped down for breakfast. The breakfast was alright for such a great place, but hey, it was included.

Now to my room; AMAZING!!! It was a two story room with a living room, kitchen and bathroom at the bottom and the actual bedroom and a bathroom on the top floor. The view from the 17th floor was amazing too and I just felt like a little princess waiting to be pampered in the spa!

The spa was great too! I got there and first had a steam sauna type experience sitting in a shower in the room. Then I moved on to the hot tub, where you could get bubbles too, not only in the water but also in a glass to drink.

On to the exfoliation, a body wrap with some sort of clay, brownish coloured mixture, my skin felt so soft afterwards, on to a body massage, on to a facial treatment ending with a foot spa. While I was waiting for the creams and masks on my feet to really absorb, I had a lovely chicken wrap, some juice and endless amounts of jasmine tea. It was a great 6 hours spent.

I got back to the room and got ready for dinner. Of course did I have a reservation at the central restaurant.

I walked the couple of blocks and reached the restaurant. It is quite hard to find but I managed to hide that I had walked past the restaurant by taking a quick photograph of the church and headed back into the restaurant.

Apparently the restaurant central is the number 4 in the world. It definitely tasted like it.

The restaurant was cool, hip and young and you could observe the kitchen as they were preparing the food and carrying out the orders. The restaurant is run by Virgilio Martínez Véliz and María Pía León.

The menu is set out that the different courses contain ingredients from different altitudes. I also chose different juices to be accompanying my menu.

1.

"Spiders on a Rock" Crab cracker with slices of limpet seaweed, Sargassum (brown macroalgae), and sea snail emulsion.

This course was accompanied by a juice of lettuce and lime.

2. "Valley of a Tree" Left: Avocado with dried chili. Middle: Black bread with carob tree and cactus. Topped with avocado jelly. Right: Avocado cream with flowers. [endif]

3. "Diversity of Corn" On the rock: Corn purée with honey and pacay. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]In the cup: Milk with tumbo (banana passionfruit). On top of the milk cup, there’s a cookie with corn powder.

This course was accompanied by a juice of tree tomato. [endif]

4. "High Altitude Rainforest" (Left)

Yacón root wrapped with a Nasturtium leaf and topped with duck emulsion, zapote (an Amazonian fruit) cream, and Nasturtium flowers.

5. "River Scales" (Right)

Gamitana (a whitefish) slices and river snail in the form of pink sauce over a Sangre de Grado (translates to “dragon’s blood”!) chip.

6. "Andean Plateau" This is supposed to represent different textures and types of bread:

Left: Cocoa leaf bread.

Flatbreads: -(Red) Chili seed. -(Star in the back) Coffee and chocolate. -(White in the front) Tunto potato.

On the stone to the right: Cornbread. Two butters: Bottom: Peruvian cheese butter. Top behind the flatbreads: Aromatic herbs

7.

"Marine Soil" Navaja (razor clam) with slices of sweet cucumber and sweet lemon sauce.

This course was accompanied by a juice of cactus fruit and pomegranate.

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One of my favourite dishes:

8. "Extreme Stems" Tubers of three root vegetables from the highlands of Peru: -Oca (black) -Ulluco (green) -Mashua (orange) Balls: dehydrated tubers Sambucus berry (elderberry) sauce Crisps of the three tubers The balls were very fluffy--kind of like the texture of gnocchi.

This course was accompanied by a juice of ginger and barley.

Another of my favourite dishes:

9. "Amazonia Colors" Slices of doncella (whitefish from the the river) with banana nut milk, heart of palm, pijuayo (peach-palm) in the form of yellow purée, and huito berry, an Amazonian fruit (they extracted black ink from it).

This course was accompanied by a juice of red seaweed and lemon verbena.

10. "Harvest and Collection" Lettuce with sea scallop. Topped with crisps of sweet granadilla.

One of my favourite dishes:

11. "Close Fishing" Octopus and dry meringue with coral/algae crisps. Top (in the small cup): Soup of octopus and barquillo (Enoplochiton niger, a shellfish).

This course was accompanied by a juice of chamomile and a special type of passion fruit.

12. "Lake Floor" Chicken (from the highlands of Peru) with cream of Moraya potato (literally a dry frozen potato) and cushuro algae from some lagoon.

13. "Low Andes Mountains" Veal with different types of quinoa. With black quinoa and olive oil, spinach, veal heart powder (it was dehydrated and ground up), and airampo. Topped with dehydrated milk crisp. Served with quinoa milk with herbs.

This course was accompanied by a juice of corn and chirimoya (sweetsop).

14. "Amazonian Rainforest" Base: Pitahaya (dragonfruit). Pink stuff: Rose apple. Yellow crisps: Lemongrass. Red powder: Sweet pepper. With chamomile.

This course was accompanied by a juice of beet root and mint (muña mint).

15. "Green Highlands" Cacao ice cream with lúcuma crisps and chaco clay paste. There’s also an aromatic herb that I couldn’t really get the name of. Chaco clay is a natural and edible clay from Puno, the south of Cusco. Apparently, they add water to it and make a paste. (Sometimes they’ll add oil or butter, depending on what they’re trying to complement).

16. "Valley Between the Andes" Left: Mashua (the root) chip. (Sitting on the frozen fruit flesh of a cocoa bean.)

Middle Left: Sanki jelly (it’s the green ball).

Middle Right: 70% cacao chip topped with sacha inchi (a herb) and kiwicha (amaranth). Right: Chamomile jelly and then muña (a mint from the Andes) jelly behind it.

17. "Solar Mucilage" The bottle behind course #16 plus the little cup at the front

O.I. water infused for 24 hours with the cacao tree (the menu says Theobroma cacao).

Best menu ever. I walked back and went to bed.

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