I love my family. That doesn’t mean that it is easy to meet their diverse food preferences and needs. When we are going out, deciding where to eat can take several hours of discussion. Enter Parada, a Peruvian restaurant in Walnut Creek. Their chef Carlos Altamirano is my hero, and he doesn’t even know it, because I don’t have to make any special requests. My mother, who is careful about eating her vegetables, shared memories of her grandparents’ farm when she had the roasted farm beet salad. My older daughter and her boyfriend, who want well-crafted food, were thrilled with the wild caught cebiche tasting menu and the anticuchos. My younger daughter went nuts over the empanadas. My dad and I loved the grilled fish options. But the truly amazing thing was that my nephew, who doesn’t eat much except macaroni and cheese, had their delicious Mac N Cheese and, when we all tried it, we agreed that it was the best we had ever had. Things like blue mashed potatoes just added to the upscale Peruvian ambiance and made Parada the most successful restaurant I have ever selected for my family.
It has been a few years since we discovered Parada. About a year ago, Karina and I added the more down-to-earth but still delicious Peruvian fare at Lucho's Restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga to our adventures. First we tried the unique drinks: Karina had the Inca Cola (it tastes a little like pineapple) and I had a chicha morada (purple corn drink with pineapple, quince, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves). Then we ate papa a la huancaina (potatoes in sauce, a lot like potato salad), lomo saltado (stir fried beef with French fries), and chaufa de pollo (chicken fried rice). I’m pretty excited about Peruvian food and have Misky Misky in West Covina on my list of restaurants still to try.
For more about Peruvian food, watch Parts Unknown season 1 episode 7 found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNrRNhXh9mM or the Peru episode of Gordon Ramsey Uncharted on DisneyPlus.
Speaking of DisneyPlus, they also stream The Emperor’s New Groove, a Disney animated comedy set in the pre-colonial Incan empire, which I watched repeatedly with the girls when they were young. If you are willing to do the cartoon version of Peru, it’s a lot of fun. Another comedy set in Peru is How to Get Over a Breakup on Netflix.
For the more serious history of Peru, I learned a lot about the Spanish conquest and colonization while I was taking Spanish classes at Cal State San Bernardino. Starting from this link, you can click through a series of lessons on that subject: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/new-spain/viceroyalty-peru/a/introduction-to-the-viceroyalty-of-peru
To learn more about diversity in Peru beyond the Incans and the Spanish, I also:
· Watched First Contact: Lost Tribe of the Amazon, which occurs on the border of Peru and Brazil: https://vimeo.com/215232524
· Watched Black in Latin America with Henry Louis Gates Jr: Mexico and Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufut6qxt1ro
· Read poetry by Julia Wong Kcomt to represent Asian immigrants in Peru: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2020-09/september-2020-asian-peruvian-two-poems-julia-wong-kcomt-jennifer-shyue/
· Appreciated the mind-bending article about the grave of an ancient female hunter found in the Peruvian Andes: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/grave-of-ancient-female-hunter-found-in-peru-andes/
I also enjoyed the Tiny Desk Concert by Hit La Rosa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3fxj5CoyfU
Here is the absolutely most amazing way to travel to Peru while staying at home! Wander and explore to your heart’s content in Machu Picchu without even a twinge of altitude sickness! There are two versions:
· The simple one: https://www.youvisit.com/tour/machupicchu
· The one where you can go anywhere! https://earth.google.com/web/@-13.15898034,-72.54410245,2240.84204062a,2941.0389585d,35y,-0h,59.93490787t,0r/data=Ci4SLBIgMjRiNWFhNTFlOGExMTFlNmJhN2U2ZjgxOGQ2OWE2ZTciCG92ZXJ2aWV3
There are more beautiful places to visit in Peru https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-peru/#more-15837 and yes, I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Peru and throughout the world.
Photo credit: Alexander Schimmeck https://unsplash.com/photos/MraFXV3v7Ts
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