M A I D O

Maido, meaning "Welcome" in Japanese is a Peruvian-Japanese style restaurant located in the very busy district Miraflores which has been voted No.1 in Lima's top 50 2018 restaurants to visit and No.7 best restaurant in the world 2018 - and there is good reason why! It offers quality flavours that will tangle your tastebuds and leave you wanting more. You can expect to have a 5* treatment from the waiting team who speak English and Spanish, also menu's are provided in English and Spanish. Detailed information about food and beverage options are available from the staff at any point and they are most friendly and helpful.

As some readers of this blog will know, after my initial eight month stint in Lima, I returned home for several months - a recharge, un descanso, relaxation from the concrete jungle. However, I returned just over a week ago, and my fiancé had arranged a meal at Maido for our first weekend back together. I have been fortunate to visit Maido three times in the last year and a half and I am always very satisfied with its contents. I like to savour every moment in that place, wishing time would stand still just a bit longer but one can only dream... As regular visitors, we often see diners at Maido ordering food as you would in any old restaurant: a starter, a main and a desert. But as we've discovered, that is just not the best way to get the full experience at Maido (the food snobs that we are). It is simply much more enjoyable to order several appetisers (we usually have five because), two mains and two deserts. We like to get two cocktails too because they really are made with care and taste so fresh and fruity. So, here is a break down of the food we like to eat and in the order we eat it:

This was a complimentary onion cake appetiser toppped with pork, which initially to me didn't sound too appealing but, I can tell you, it was just a taster of what was to come.

Next in line is our ultimate favourite (although mine pars with the next photo) that is salmon and chilli sushi bites found in the right bottom corner topped with onion and seeds. The yellow sauce is actually a Peruvian chilli which can be found in every restaurant, it is called "aji" and is very popular with Peruvians, not too spicy but adds flavour. The top left is similar, Tuna sushi bites with raw onion again. And yes, we do eat them with chopsticks!

Ooh, my second favourite sushi bite is "A lo pobre", tender beef with a melting quail egg on top. The thought of quail egg would usually repulse me, but really it is just a small egg and tastes exactly the same as a hen's egg, so one has to get over it. And of course, underneath is filled with sticky rice. Mmm. I could eat five.

I had never had this one before, and it was unusual but good. Underneath this pancake looking cover are six fish dumplings that you dip into the soy sauce as seen next to it. This was a bit more tricky to do with the chopsticks but we managed it!

This is where it gets a little more seriously Peruvian and less Japanese. Here is "Cuy" a very traditional meal in Peru, which is a very popular source of meat in the more outer regions of Lima and Peru in general. When I was volunteering in Trujillo (North of Peru), I would often see huts upon huts upon huts of live "Cuy", queue translation = Guinneapig! Yes I ate Guinneapig! I thought of my thirteen year old self, the girl obsessed with my friend's pets Basil and Manuel, but I had to give it a go. I won't be in Peru forever and it actually was incredibly tasty. Was that because I was in a posh restaurant? Or because Guinneapig is actually nice? I don't know if I'll ever find out, but this experience was a good one. Sat on top of a cauliflower cream bed.

50 hours cooked sticky beef with oriental rice, recommended to eat with a spoon. Do I need to say anymore? Gone in minutes. Goodbye.

Another favourite (there are so many) main is this Cod fillet with roasted Almonds dipped into a creamy creamy mash potato. Too much of this main though can be sickly and a little goes a long way.

We actually had three main courses this time, mainly because my partner craved it and I hadn't tried it before. So here is main course numero 3, Oxtail in a cheesy creamy sauce and it was just divine. If I didn't have a problem with cheese (TMI sorry) then I would have gladly eaten the whole thing. As it was, I only had a snippet, of which was dreamy.

Chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce and ice cream... yum!

And finally, 70% cocoa chocolate mousse with jelly like balls (I am not actually sure what they are) fruit shards, ice cream and nuts. You obviously can't eat the cocoa underneath which we are told every time we have it, I imagine that's because someone has actually tried to eat them before......! Big lols from me.

Anyway, the man behind the magic is Mitsuharu Tsumura, a Peruvian born Japanese, trained in the US. He then travelled to Japan to learn more about his cultural and culinary heritage and it was there that he learnt about sushi. And now thanks to him, we can enjoy this great food! If you are able to attend this place, you might even be lucky enough to lunch beside him, as we did :) - obviously on different tables. I hope you have enjoyed reading this post. For your information, the average waiting time to get a table at Maido is about 4 weeks, and this can change depending on season, so it is definitely recommended to book in advance to your trip which can easily be accessed via the website: http://www.maido.pe/en/ Adios Amigos x