Lima - El Veridico de Fidel

As much as I enjoyed Easter Island, I was thrilled to be back in Lima, as I really enjoy the food in this city. For the Missus it was all about Cebiche. For me, it was noticing the interesting way that the cuisine has changed here since we first visited back in 2007. Back then, it was places, which are still around like, Astrid y Gaston, Pescado Capitales, and El Fayke Piurano. On this trip, we'd already seen the evolution of "Nikkei" cuisine at Maido, but were on the fence about our meal at La Mar. The Missus wanted Her Cebiche....a good and pure cebiche, which for Her is the ultimate taste of Peru.

We landed at Jorge Chaevez airport ontime at a shade after 11am. Like before, our driver from Taxidatum was waiting for us as we cleared immigration. It was too early to check in at our hotel, we were staying at the rather new Courtyard Miraflores. So we dropped off our bags and headed out to find some lunch. I knew the Missus really wanted cebiche, so we headed off to one of the places on my list. A place named El Veridico de Fidel.

Located rather close to Maido, Calle Colon is fairly quiet, as was this place when we arrived.

No English menu, just one very sweet young lady who spoke English, I guess she gets any tourist who visits. It was our kind of place. An unfussy menu, which started off with some canchita.....which was decent, but not as good as what we had earlier at La Mar.

On the menu, it said....in Spanish of course, that the "Nuesto Plato Bandera" was Leche de Tigre.....leche de tigre? Now, I love the liquid used as the base for classic Peruvian cebiche....but a dish based around that? I had to try it. I saw "erizo" on one of the versions of this and had to get it, the "Leche de Tigre Super Especial" (28S/$8.50). In case you don't know what "erizo" is, the picture is worth a thousand words.

Yes, it's uni...and a nice fresh and sweet scallop with roe, and nicely marinated lenguado, whitefish, in an interesting broth. Not quite as sour as chugging straight leche de tigre; but creamy, tempered, flavored with cilantro...this was so refreshing, I just loved it. The Missus poached the camote (simmered sweet potato) which She enjoyed. Man, this was good.

The Missus got the Ceviche Clasico (38S/$11.30 US).

The Missus loved the lenguado; She said it was perfectly prepared and flavored for Her taste. We told the nice young lady that we do enjoy "picante" so she brought us some aji limo, which were spicy, but quite sweet and floral. I gotta get my hands on some plants. The Missus of course enjoyed the camote (sweet potato) and the corn. She was less enamored with the concha negras, which were a bit too bitter for us. Still, She loved that ceviche.

I also wanted to try the Causa, so we ordered the Causa Langostinos.

Which we really didn't enjoy too much. The potato portion was a bit too dry for our taste and there was too much mayo.

On the funny end, I hadn't tried Chicha Morada in years! This "Kool-Aidish" style drink was quite sweet, but we still enjoyed this as it made us feel like we were really in Peru.

The place filled up fast. What we noticed was the customers in this faux patio were all  limeños having lunch.

Simply put, this is the kind of place we enjoy. It's really no fuss, no muss, straight forward food. Quite good...the Missus loved the place. So we made reservations. We'd have our last meal in Lima here at El Veridico de Fidel.

El Veridico de Fidel
Calle Colon 246
Lima 18, Peru  

So....we managed to finally get into our room at the Courtyard rather late. And they did a nice thing and we got upgraded to a corner suite.

 

And in spite of not everything making sense in the room; for instance, the "espresso pod" machine was on a shelf that didn't pull out, so you had to actually unplug the machine, then put in on some table, then plug into run........it was quite a comfortable room.

And when it came down to location, this was great; a nice convenience store across the street, a nice view at night. Or even during the day......

Thanks for reading!

Comments

[kat]

nice!

[Kirk]

The Missus enjoyed it so much that we went back Kat!

[Soo @ hungryones]

That's a classy looking corner suite!

[Dan Obuhanych]

Hey Kirk,

I am a longtime reader (also ex-Kamaaina), and am traveling to Miraflores in December for a family wedding (my wife's family). Would you mind sharing your "list" of Lima/Miraflores eateries? (I have already read through all of your Peru posts.)

Thanks in advance!

Dan

[Kirk]

Hi Soo - It was a nice place to stay at.

Hey Dan - I sent you an email with a list. I'm envious. I hope you have a great time!