Unsurprisingly, the best story of my trip to Peru -- the most defining moment, really -- was about food. Let's call this story How a Dessert Got Me in Trouble and Nearly Made Me Miss My Cousin's Wedding.
It was the second day of my trip; the day of the wedding. My (other) cousin (with whom I was staying), her husband and I had some time to kill between the wedding ceremony and the reception, which didn't start until 8 pm. Let's get a drink, we said. Sweet! Problem was, it was now shortly before 7 pm, and bars and restaurants in Lima don't tend to open until 7:30 or 8. We finally landed at La Trattoria di Mambrino, where I had my first Pisco sour of several to come that week, along with a couple of appetizers.
As we ate and drank, I listed the many things I was planning to eat before my trip was up. I wanted one aunt to cook for me, and also another aunt; I had to eat lomo saltado, ceviche at La Mar, pollo a la brasa at Pardo's, anticuchos, empanadas, chicarrones, picarones ...
"Picarones?" my cousin's husband said. "Oh my God. We know where you can get the BEST picarones. They're so good. They're filled with bananas, and they're the best you'll ever have. The restaurant is just around the corner, in fact! We should go! Let's go now. We may never get another chance."
(Picarones, for the uninitiated, are sort of a deep-fried doughnut dessert served with syrup poured over the top. They're nearly impossible to find in the U.S. because they have to be made to order. And I flove them.)
"But ... the wedding!" I protested, feebly. "Isn't it starting, uh, now?" My watch said it was 8:00.
"Oh, they're not going to start on time," he said. "If we get going now, by the time we get there, they'll just have started serving the food. Come on. You have to have these."
Here was, clearly, a man after my own heart. "Um ... sure, OK."
We drove over to the restaurant, Astrid y Gastón, which hadn't been open at 7:00 but was now full of customers; my cousin's husband ran inside and asked the staff, "How long will it take you to make picarones con platanos?" Thirteen minutes! they said. He dashed back out and reported the news to us, and we hustled inside. Thirteen minutes (more or less) later, they emerged: puffy, golden, glorious. We poured the syrup on top, gazed in reverence, and then devoured the entire plate. It was one of the top five desserts of my life. When you took a bite, the outside was light and crispy, the inside filled with mashed bananas, lightly sweetened, literally (it seemed) melting in your mouth.
By the time we were headed to the wedding, it was 9 pm. "So, we lost track of time, and then we got stuck in traffic," we recited to each other in the car. Which, technically, isn't 100% true, but it wasn't totally a lie, either. After all, we were stuck in traffic right at that moment. And honestly the moment the picarones hit my tongue, I lost all sense of time, space or reason.
We arrived at the hotel and opened the doors to the reception space ... and whose table should be right in front of us but the bride and groom's, plus our uncle and aunt's. "Patricia, did you just get here?" my cousin the groom asked.
"I ... uh ... uh ..." I looked around frantically. There was no help to be found. "Err, yes?"
"You missed my dance!" he said. "And we had a video!"
What? Already? Oops. I felt about two inches tall. Sweet memories of the picarones started to fade. I apologized profusely and tried to make a joke, then headed around the room to say hello to my many other aunts, uncles and cousins -- all of whom greeted me with some variation on the phrase "Where have you been?" My dad looked pissed. One cousin asked me if I was drunk already.
It turned out that in addition to the dance and the video, my cousin had given a speech ... in which he'd mentioned me. And I wasn't there.
It bears repeating: OOPS. Or as they might say in Peru, Soy una sonsa. (You can look that up.)
In my defense, there's a phrase known as "Peruvian time," which means "an hour late." That is, no Peruvian wedding ever starts on time. In addition to that, if you showed up an hour late to an American wedding, no one would bat an eye. I forgot, of course, that my cousin and his bride lived in London. Where, I guess, punctuality counts.
All that said, we all had a lovely time at the wedding (at which I dutifully ate my third meal of the night, a practice that would become alarmingly standard throughout the course of my visit), and they showed the video again and did another slow dance, and everyone laughed over our story once we felt emboldened enough to tell it -- in fact, once we told people where we were and what we'd eaten, they invariably became obsessed with trying to figure out how the bananas got inside the picarones -- and we danced until the wee hours of the morning, cousins, aunts and uncles, all. And when I think back on the trouble I got into and the embarrassment I wrought, then I think about the picarones ... and realize I'd do it all over again, in a heartbeat.
~~~~~
In the end, I got to eat nearly everything on my list. Por ejemplo:
Lomo saltado (beef stir fry with french fries, red onion and tomatoes), made by another cousin's husband at their beach house
Causa sampler at popular "cebicheria" La Mar (causa is mashed yellow potatoes, with stuff on it)
Traditional ceviche at La Mar
Asian-style ceviche at La Mar
Derrumbado de chirimoya at La Mar (chirimoya is a fruit indigenous to the region; I don't really know what derrumbado is, except some kind of mousse thing. Incidentally the dessert was scrumptious)
Artichokes stuffed with crab, at my aunt's house
Octopus salad, at my aunt's house
Cabrito (goat) stew at my aunt's house
My aunt's famed pepian de gallina (kind of like a risotto with hen)
Anticuchos at Pardo's
Pollo a la brasa at Pardo's
Tiradito (Peruvian sashimi) at Fiesta
Patitas (at Fiesta), which is ... fine, it's pig's feet, OK? I like pig's feet! So sue me!
Arroz can pato (rice with duck) at Fiesta. Immediately after eating the picarones, my cousin's husband said, "Oh, you know what's also really great? The arroz con pato at Fiesta. You wanna go now?" The wedding prevailed, of course, but I spent the entire week being told how great the arroz con pato was, and salivating in anticipation. We finally ate at Fiesta on my last day in Lima -- and the arroz con pato was well worth the wait. And we didn't even get in trouble for eating it.