Merkado 31

This Peruvian restaurant serves excellent traditional Limeño dishes like lomo saltado and papas a la huancaína, but it’s the more innovative dishes that are the real draw here. Quinoa-crusted shrimp with tart Amazonian camu camu syrup is something you’ll rarely find outside of Peru. There is even a dish of corvina in a Peruvian ají chutney, the Indian-inspired spices combining with imported Peruvian chile peppers in an unexpected way that really works. The menu also features many pasta and risotto dishes that take me back to Lima’s old-school trattorias run by Ligurian immigrants. The trigo, a wheat berry risotto with mushrooms, tastes just like what I used to eat at Pastificio Ligure with my dad as a kid.