Saturday, January 28, 2012

food and other observations

A smattering of whatever else I can remember about Trujillo...

Plaza de Armas during the day... and it's another cloudy, humid day!

One of my Peruvian sisters married into a restaurant family in Trujillo. This is the place where I ate lots of food cooked by... I guess I'd call him my uncle. And let me tell you, Uncle can cook!

If you're ever in Trujillo, you need to drop by. This place is only open for lunch but it gets busier than a beehive.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of everything - sometimes food just gets scarfed down before I remember my camera - but here's a sample of the delicacies in served at Kontiki:

Papa a la huancaína, some sort of seasoned grilled chicken, and Trujillo's namesake beer. In the rectangular plate on the right you can see the remnants of tiradito, a delicious spin on ceviche that serves raw fish in an ají-based sauce rather than a lime marinade.

Tacu-tacu... this rice-and-beans log far outweighs the miniature version served at Limón Rotisserie.

Coco's special chanchito a cilindro, Peru's answer to smoked ribs... so tender. Served with yucca.

Cabrito... I'm still not sure what meat I ate here. I thought I heard chupacabra but they don't have that creature down in the South (South America.) Anyways, this meat is covered in a rich, almost tomatoey sauce and served with rice and beans.

Mussels, tiradito-style.

Tallarines! Like fettucine but with a cleaner taste (you know, since it's not made with semolina in Italy.) The sauce is very similar to pesto. Peruvians favor their noodles with a side of slow-cooked beef.

At the home of my Peruvian sister we ate cuy (guinea pig.) Lots of bones but the meat is very rich and dark. It's not my first choice of meat since the rodent is commonly kept as a pet back home but it is a Peruvian delicacy I missed out during my first trip to Peru. Just wish I had a picture!

Kontiki restaurant is really the center of the family's life. Two of Tío's three kids live above the restaurant with him. The third is Chino, the guy who married my sister. They live only two blocks away from Kontiki; as you can imagine, Chino is never late for work. Also, Kontiki is right across the street from a park so the kids never stray too far to play.

I'm pretty sure I shot at this tree with fireworks!

But not everything the family needs is so close by... the family frequented the shopping mall Real Plaza for... a price check on drums? Anyways there's a playground outside but you have to cross the parking lot to get from the mall to the mall's playground... bad idea. But even worse? The proximity and lack of height of this electric box to the playground. Yes, declaring the box peligro! will surely keep children away.

Who doesn't sell bread on the street?

Traffic around Trujillo's downtown... I'm told that Trujillo is not only the city of eternal spring but also the unofficial shoe capital. You know what that means!

Though this part of Trujillo sells shoes for all walks of life, they're not immune to vending other playthings for children...

... or food. Everyone needs a shopping pick-me-up.


The locura outside the shoe mecca...

... and the vendors who couldn't secure a space inside.

For the millions of sandals inside the cramped shoe center, we all agreed that they were overpriced. Even though the aisles were stuffy, I liked walking through the streets of shoes... the spaces here are really small, so small that sellers have to store extra sizes and styles on the second floor. Ladders are required to access the shoes.

We ended up not buying a thing at the shoe market but I might return... after a spray-tan.

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