Cuenca’s Easter soup, fanesca, is considered by many to be the best in Latin America and it is a tradition among Cuencanos to have at least one bowl of it during Holy Week.

Eating on Easter Island is expensive. Most restaurant meals average around $30 for a main course and a beer. The price of getting ingredients to the most remote island in the world is costly, therefore using the native ingredients and products from the island (like the new Easter Island beer, Mahina), which deforestation has limited greatly unfortunately, is advised to keep your budget on target. This means sticking to the island’s two most common fish: Tuna and Kana Kana.

Nuela’s Arroz con Pato isn’t a Peruvian Arroz con Pato. It’s more of a cross between a Peruvian arroz con pato and a Spanish paella. The restaurant, probably the top Pan-Latin restaurant in New York City right now, is often mistaken for a Peruvian one as they base quite a few dishes on Peruvian ones, use lots of Peruvian ingredients, and have a generous selection of Pisco based cocktails. Their Arroz con Pato (the name translates simply to duck with rice) has been their signature dish since opening and was named one of the New York Times’ best dishes of 2010.

For every person I spoke with on an eating trip in Puerto Rico’s southern shore there were dozens of recipes I couldn’t even get to, like a place that serves sandwiches using flattened plantains as bread. There is one meal that nearly everyone recommended: Chuletas Can Can. These fried pork chops with the fat cap left on appear on a few menus near the town of Yauco, most famously at La Guardarray, a 50-year-old Meson that invented the dish to serve to visiting cockfighters. The old place is big now. They’ve expanded beyond the original room, adding several new open-air dining rooms and a stage for live music and dancing.

The best Peruvian style chicken I’ve ever eaten isn’t from Peru. It’s from a Korean-american team in Los Angeles lead by Roy Choi, best known for their creation of the Korean taco and helping jumpstart the gourmet food truck craze in the United States. They call it “Cracklin Beer Can Chicken,” and it’s served Peruvian-style, with century egg, salsa roja, salsa verde.”

In the past year, I’ve seen more and more Peruvian restaurants in Lima adding Ceviche Frito (Fried Ceviche) to their menu. The concept sounds perplexing, but really isn’t. It’s basically battered and fried seafood that is given the same treatment of purple onions and bits of rocoto that are soaked lime juice (basically, leche de tigre) poured over it just like a typical Peruvian ceviche.

Their patio tables sit in the parking lot right up against the cars, but that doesn’t mean Juez y Parte (Judge & Jury) cannot put out a mean cebiche. Here the specials are called the chef’s sentence. My verdict: Cebiche Causa de Divorcio (Ceviche that is the cause of Divorce)…. Read More →

The first time I really began to love Chilean sandwiches, and notice their mass appeal, was in the Southern Patagonian town – the very last on the continent – of Punta Arenas after a quarter of the earth flight from Quito, Ecuador. I was in airports for close to 15 hours and landed late in the evening, though it was still bright out as the sun didn’t set until early morning in that time of year.