Four Dishes in a Hundred-Year-Old House in Miraflores

The venue is half the reason. WasiPai is a boutique hotel in a hundred-year-old property that has been restored rather than gutted, a block from the crossing of Pardo and Del Ejercito and near the Miraflores waterfront, and cooking in a room with that much history in it is not the same as cooking in a studio.

Four dishes with a professional chef, and the history of Peruvian cooking comes with them, which in this country is not decoration: the food is what happened when Andean ingredients met Spanish, African, Chinese, Japanese and Italian arrivals, and knowing that changes how the dishes read.

Going by the operator's own photographs, causa and lomo saltado are on the list, and the causa is finished with an avocado heart, which is the sort of thing that looks impossible until somebody shows you the cut.

The technique is meant to travel. You are cooking in order to do it again at home, not to watch.

Two and a half hours. Ten people at most, in English or Spanish, with a pisco sour, a second drink of your choice, dinner, coffee and tea and bottled water.

Wheelchair accessible, service animals allowed. Eighteen to drink.