Peru, South America
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Food business taking off in Peru
By Dan Collyns | BBC News, Lima
Rich or poor, Peruvians pride themselves on eating well. Fast food is frowned upon and a poorly-prepared platter is seldom tolerated.
Strange in a country where a quarter of children still suffer from malnutrition but Peru's sharp inequality is one of its many paradoxes. It is one of the 10 countries in the world classed as 'mega-diverse' in terms of its biodiversity, which means in nutritional terms it is rich beyond measure.
The Andes holds dozens of unique grains, roots and vegetables. It is the birthplace of the potato, with around 3,000 varieties. The Peruvian Amazon is sparsely populated but a whole new world of flora and fauna. You can find caiman (a type of crocodile) on the menu here and an enormous freshwater fish, the paiche. Plaintains, peccaries (a type of wild pig) and dozens of unusual fruits make up the cuisine.
Peru's coast has probably the richest fishing grounds in the world thanks to the cold water Humboldt Current which sweeps up the western side of South America from Antarctica. While chronic overfishing has left much of the rest of the world's oceans with dwindling fish stocks, Peru's sea is still bountiful. It has 80% of the world's biomass of anchovies near the bottom of a thriving food chain of marine fauna.
Fishmeal exports are one of the principal pillars of the economy. But now it is the food business which could be propping up Peru's strong economic growth as the financial crisis hits commodity prices and the country's extractive industries. One study by a Peruvian company, Arellano Marketing, predicts that the food business will make up about 11% of Peru's predicted GDP in 2009. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
Teaching the world to love Peruvian cuisine
By Naomi Mapstone / Financial Times
Peruvians queue for no one. Queuing is for patsies, pushovers, foreigners who don't know any better. In Lima, the brash, chaotic capital, shoppers form scrums in front of hard-eyed assistants, drivers invent lanes between techni-coloured minivans stuffed with commuters, surfers steal waves like baseball players sneaking third, and the wealthy opt out entirely, sending maids in their stead or greasing a few palms.
It was odd, then, last September, to see a queue of World Cup proportions gather on the outskirts of Miraflores, a wealthy suburb of Lima. For three days, the line snaked its way around a convention centre, where the country's first international gastronomic fair was taking place. Limeños paid 20 soles for tickets, the cost of several three-course meals in a local restaurant, and the mood in line was one of delight. "How delicious," said Luis Diaz, rubbing his paunch in glee at the thought of a full day's eating. Diaz and his friends Lourdes Ospina and Diego Carrera were unfazed by their two-hour wait, whiling away the time with food fantasies. "Ceviche, mmm, my favourite, duck with rice, prawn chowder," he said, ticking off his mental wish list. "I heard there is lucuma [a jungle fruit with flesh the texture of hard-boiled egg yolk] ice cream," Ospina enthused. "And picarones [doughnut-shaped pumpkin fritters with spiced molasses]".
Nor was their enthusiasm dampened by their being unable to afford $200 seminars with chefs such as Albert Adriá from Catalonia's legendary El Bulli restaurant, or Manuel Tejedor of Galicia's Casa Marcelo. To them, as to many in the crowd, the real star of this show was homegrown: Gastón Acurio, the mop-haired messiah of Peruvian cuisine. The owner of more than 20 restaurants in Peru and abroad, author of more than a dozen cookbooks and host of a popular cable television show, 41-year-old Acurio is a household name in this nation of 28 million. And he's also the seemingly unstoppable force behind the growing popularity of Peruvian food around the world. If ceviche doesn't become the next sushi — going from exotic to popular to ubiquitous in the space of a few decades — it won't be for lack of trying on his part.
