Food & Dining,  Money, Economics, Politics

Food Businesses Boom in Peru

BBC Online published an insightful overview yesterday of Peru’s booming food industries (“Food business taking off in Peru,” 9/25/09), to coincide with this weekend’s second annual gastronomic fair in Lima.  Dan Collyns reports on the growth of gourmet restaurants, artisanal products and food exports, trends that are helping to prop up Peru’s economy in the face of a global economic downtown. (He also notes Peruvians’ preference for fresh, rather than processed, foods, an idea I’ve been harping on lately in this blog.)

Peruvians’ love of good food cuts across class, racial and ethnic barriers, Collyns says, and reflects the country’s rich bio-diversity, from its ocean waters teeming with fish, to the unusual fruits of the Amazon to the high-altitude cultivation of more than 3,000 varieties of potatoes.

Peru’s growing food business is expected to make up 11 percent of the country’s GDP in 2009, says one marketing expert.

Gaston Acurio tells the BBC that ceviche is “only the beginning” of Peru’s gastronomic inventiveness:

Our story is one of a third world country. For the first time a Peruvian invention — our food — is seducing the world, so that’s like liberation for us.”

For Mr Acurio, Peruvian food reflects a perfect blend of all its cultures and races, added to over time by waves of immigration.

“Like an orchestra with a lot of instruments, all our bloods are like a perfect melody,” he says.

Read the entire article here.

One factor behind Peru’s food boom that the BBC doesn’t mention is the relatively low cost of real estate in Lima. Aspiring chefs with a few thousand dollars’ backing can open a restaurant in a rented space in Miraflores and keep operational costs relatively low. You couldn’t do that in many of the other great food cities — New York, Paris, San Franciscio. Restaurateurs there need huge start-up capital and must prove themselves within a short period of time or risk closing, as do 9 out of 10 restaurants in NYC in their first year. (Anthony Bourdain vividly describes this cutthroat process in Kitchen Confidential, a book that purged me of any residual fantasies I might have entertained about how much “fun” it would be to open my own restaurant. Not.)

Here in Lima, I know three chefs who’ve opened their own restaurants within the last two years and been able to keep them open as they develop and refine their dishes and presentations.

Those lower costs translate to more affordable meals, which brings traffic to restaurants, which promotes greater food consciousness, which inspires more innovation and competition among Peruvian chefs. It all comes full circle.

The formula could be shattered, though, if real-estate costs rose too high for newcomers to invest in their own eateries. Ditto if ingredient costs shot up. A recent UN report on poverty worldwide noted that food prices in South America had remained stable relative to rising costs in North America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The stability of food prices in Peru is part of what is fueling the country’s gastronomic boom.

Let’s hope, for the sake of those of us who live and eat in Lima, that conditions continue to favor the Peruvian tradition of bueno, barato y bastante.

I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.

8 Comments

  • Pico

    Hola Barb,

    People in the US are amazed when I tell them that Peruvians are spoiled with food. Even the poorest will make a fuzz because they can tell when the food is not fresh or when it does not taste good.

    Also, restaurants cannot afford to take shortcuts because they will not remain in business too long. And that goes from the huariques to the most upscale ones.

    I am getting hungry now.

    Saludos

  • Erin Autin

    Ha, I first heard of the “tres b’s” from a Colombian, but it definitely works for Peru, too! I’m happy that Peruvian food is getting more recognition in hopes that it will be more available in the US. There are a few places, but most of them are upscale and expensive, aside from the ones I’ve been to in Florida.

  • Astrid

    Peruanos had always liked to eat. Even during crazy times like the 80’s when terrorism was at its peak and eating out could meant eating by a ‘coche bomba’ (I was kicked out of my chair by the expansion wave of a car bomb while eating in a Chifa). Nothing will stop us from enjoying food and this means cooking it as well as eating it.
    I think is in our DNA.

  • Barb

    Yes, Eric, I’ve also noticed that Peruvian food in the States is priced way over what you’d pay for the same thing here. (I wrote a few months ago about a chupe that was selling for $25 a bowl. The Chicago restaurant owners were marketing it as “Peruvian Viagra.”)

    Wow, Astrid. What a story. I’m wondering if after you and the other clients were blown out of your chairs — did you pick up your spoons and keep eating your arroz chifa? Here in Peru, nothing goes to waste. Maybe it is in Peruvians’ DNA, as you say. Hope the blast didn’t hurt you or anyone else. I remember visiting Lima in the ’90s and bombs going off in Miraflores.

  • Astrid

    Barb, how did you know? Where you there? Exactly, we picked up our spoons and continued eating. Luckily that one time, no one was hurt. But many people died on other instances because of those car bombs. Those were sad times…