While any guide book can tell you Lima’s history, one thing it might not reveal is how spectacular its cuisine has become. Lima is the culinary jewel of South America – there are restaurants here that can out-style New York and could make our uppity little celebrity chefs in London shiver in fear.

I’d had a tip that the place to lunch was La Mar in Mirraflores, the posh end of the city. This was a chebicheria – cerbiche, the national dish, is raw fish served with spices and marinated in lime juice –  and it’s owned by Gastón Acurio, the Gordon Ramsay of Peru. It was rammed and rightly so. Here was flavour in Technicolor – tuna with tomato and coriander, Peruvian sea bass with avocado and sugar cane, clams and octopus in white vinegar and chilli, all served with the sweetest sweet potato. Peru is built on the potato – it has over 2,000 varieties. We nipped into the kitchen and nipped straight out again. It was tiny, packed with white-coated chefs sipping bottles of Cusquena beer and torching up the place with flambé-ing frying pans. It wasn’t posh, but it was slick – turn up in a collar  and you’ll fit straight in. The portions were massive and the prices tiny; a cerbiche was less than £3.

C&T recommends:

• Eat: Any of the cerbiche on the menu, they were all spectacular
• Drink: Pisco Sour – the outstanding Peruvian cocktail of Pisco grape brandy, lime juice, egg white and bitters
• Check out: Astridygaston.com - the site for Gaston Acurio’s flagship, and more formal, evening restaurant
• Listen: Jamie Cuadra’s laid back Peruvian chillout (goes down well with a Pisco Sour)