At Maido, head chef Mitsuharu Tsumura introduces diners to Nikkei cuisine, which combines Peruvian ingredients and Japanese techniques. In this context, Nikkei refers to Japanese immigrants and their descendants who have brought their customs and traditions to countries around the world, including Peru in South America.
Mitsuharu's ancestors came to Peru in 1889, along with approximately 7,000 others searching for jobs. They were given two-year work contracts and primarily worked on farms. Of course, these Japanese emigrants brought their cooking habits and dietary preferences. If the preferred ingredients weren't available, they made substitutes.
At the time, Peruvian food didn't fully take advantage of the Pacific Ocean's bountiful seafood supply, a mainstay of Japanese cuisine. Ingredients such as raw fish, octopus, and scallops were slowly but surely folded into Peruvian dishes. Tiradito is an excellent example of this process.
At Maido, chef Mitsuharu spotlights Peruvian Nikkei cuisine and promotes it globally. His efforts have been recognized, with Maido voted the best restaurant in Latin America by The World's 50 Best Restaurants four times (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2023). It ranked #4 globally for 2024.
Related: World's Best Restaurants
Table of Contents
Dining at Maido
I've had the pleasure of dining at Maido three times. The photos in this post are from two meals I enjoyed after the restaurant's interior renovation.
My first dinner was ordered a la carte at the sushi bar in 2016. Following a few small appetizers, I was impressed by incredibly flavorful miso-marinated cod with potato cream and crispy bahuaja nuts (pictured above).
The creatively-plated Amador Chocolate 70% cacao with yuzu, shica shica ice cream, mochis, bahuaja nut, and cacao nibs were an excellent dessert.
In 2017, I won a free trip for two to Machu Picchu with G Adventures from National Geographic. Despite trekking to Machu Picchu in 2011, I didn't pass on the opportunity to go back.
I invited my friend Freddy, who hadn't been yet. Following the one-week tour, we returned to Lima and went to Maido for the full 13-course Nikkei food menu.
Related: Exploring Ecosystems in Peru
Nikkei Experience
Maido is housed in a small, two-story building in Lima's affluent (and touristy) Miraflores district. We arrived on time for our 1 p.m. reservation on a Monday in early February. Freddy suggested sake, so we ordered a bottle to share and were allowed to pick the glass from which we'd drink it.
Early Courses
The first course was a trio of bite-size snacks on ice, including:
- Sushi rice cracker with avocado, trout belly
- Regional sausage with roasted banana, sachatomate emulsion, crunchy tapioca, and ponzu
- Aji negro chawanmushi
Next was one of my favorite dishes of the meal: poda ceviche with sarandaja cream, mackerel, shallots, limo pepper, chulpi corn, and Nikkei leche de tigre.
Leche de tigre, literally “tiger’s milk,” is the citrus-based, spicy marinade used to cure the fish in classic Peruvian ceviche.
Saveur
The textured silver bowl helped make this one of the prettiest ceviche presentations I've seen. I initially didn't appreciate ceviche, having tried it on a beach in Ecuador and later at run-of-the-mill restaurants in Peru. My first positive experience came at Astrid y Gaston; Maido proved even better. I still prefer sushi and sashimi to ceviche.
Our third course was a dim sum of squid and sea snail cau cau with camotillo cream and crispy white quinoa. This dish also reminded me of Astrid y Gaston, where the first course was a single sea snail presented in its shell.
The fourth course, a pork belly sandwich on a steamed bun with Kimchee emulsion and creole sauce, broke the seafood pattern.
And then it was back to the Pacific, with the catch of the day—scallop and sea urchin nigiri to the left and a piece of tuna belly to the right.
Our second serving of ceviche was presented table-side with a flash of showmanship. A heavy rock was placed in front of us as a bowl, and the waiter poured two scoops of liquid-nitrogen-cooled leche de tigre on top of the ceviche.
The leche de tigre was made with aji amarillo, a popular medium-intensity yellow South American chili pepper. Aji amarillo is also used in my favorite Peruvian dish, aji de gallina, which consists of white meat chicken bathed in a creamy yellow pepper sauce.
Middle Courses
Our seventh course was a small portion of cuy, or guinea pig, with cauliflower cream, garlic and rocoto cream, torkiara sauce, and Pachacamac greens.
Guinea pig is a traditional delicacy in Ecuador and Peru, and I'd tried it twice in the former before arriving in Peru. Due to its price, which is expensive by local standards, cuy is often reserved for celebratory occasions when a family can order whole guinea pigs.
Smaller portions can also often be ordered by the half or quarter. I'm not a fan of the meat, which is primarily fat and gristle. However, being presented with a small piece of meat in a fine-dining restaurant such as Maido in Lima made it more palatable.
As mentioned, I enjoyed the entree-sized miso-marinated blackened cod during my second visit to Maido in 2016. Therefore, I was delighted to see it on the tasting menu two years later, albeit as a smaller portion. The bahuaja nuts sourced in the Amazon were still a part of it. Apple gel and powdered Porcon mushrooms were also used.
Course nine was seafood garnished with seaweed in a small black pot. The waiter then poured the soup on top. I like this approach to soups as it allows you to see the ingredients more clearly before they're submerged.
In addition to the cod, the beef short rib 50 hours is another of chef Mitsuharu's signature dishes. Here, it's served with camotillo potato cream, crispy rice, cushurro, purple corn powder, and black garlic. The photo below doesn't do it justice, as the lights reflected off the dark black stone used to plate it.
The eleventh course, and last before dessert, featured Atico sea urchins over Chiclayo rice with avocado cream, wan yi, and baby corn. Chiclayo is a city near the coast of northern Peru. It's easily accessible as the Pan-American Highway runs through it.
See also: Latin America's Best Restaurants
Desserts
The first dessert, "Reef," is a playful recreation of a marine ecosystem. Tofu cheesecake ice cream is presented in a glass bowl with bread sand, sweet potato, apple with wakame, camu camu, taperiba, burgundy grape tapiocas, and a dusting of nitrogen-cooled soy milk.
Finally, course thirteen (my lucky number) represented a mussel. A granadilla with mandarin sorbet, mucilage foam, cacao nibs, lucuma ice cream, and raspberries was delivered on an old piece of porous black coral. I was first exposed to granadilla and lucuma while living in Colombia.
Visit Maido Nikkei Restaurant
- Address: 399 San Martin Street, Miraflores, Lima, Peru
- Dress: Smart casual
- Reservations: Highly recommended
- Website
