Lima, Shoreditch

I don't usually like to do invited reviews back-to-back, so this was supposed to be a post about a lovely Catalonian restaurant called El Molí de L'Escala. El Molí serve a daily-changing menu of exciting and unusual local seafood (they had sea cucumber on the menu last week, and scorpion fish), foraged seasonal fare (fully five different types of wild local mushrooms) and world-class premium meats (proper Txuleton from Txogitxu in San Sebastian) for prices so reasonable - even for Spain - you wonder how they make any money at all. We had 3 set menus, a bonus plate of Palamós prawns (the best prawns in the world, trust me), plenty of wine and cava and the bill came to €56 each. It was all absolutely brilliant.

Sadly, due to an unfortunate run in with a dodgy SD card reader from a roadside stall in Girona (note: if the price of an SD card reader seems too good to be true, it probably is) I lost all my photos, so the post about El Molí has been put on the back burner until I can either go back for another reasonably priced lunch or somehow un-corrupt my photos from last week. In the meantime, I may as well tell you about another towering achievement in regional Hispanic food, albeit this time from the other end of the world, Lima in Shoreditch.

I was always predisposed to like Lima Shoreditch because I was a huge fan of their original site in Fitzrovia. Then, as now, there just isn't anyone else, as far as I'm aware, at least outside of Peru itself, doing this kind of thing at this kind of level to such astonishing effect. True, there are South American restaurants all over the place, and one or two fairly decent Cevicherias in London but Lima is the finest ambassador for this cuisine as you could hope for, a really smart and exciting little place operating entirely to its own set of rules and procedures.

Even the table snacks are noteworthy - a little bowl of fried corn kernels, not tooth-shatteringly crunchy like the stuff from the packets but moreish and satisfying, like flaky peanuts. They arrived alongside one of my favourite drinks of the moment, a Margarita Picante (Homeboy in Angel do a very good one as well, if you can put up with the insane noise levels) and I heard appreciative noises made about their Pisco Sour too.

Another snack (sort of), oyster topped with a wonderful basil foam, was notable not just for the base of zingy lean oyster but the surprising chilli hit from togarashi powder, which lifted all the other flavours around it. In fact, everything you need to know about the way Lima approach their menu can be learned from this single mouthful of oyster - accessible, attractive and inviting but at the same time surprising with unexpected techniques and flavours, it was a great start to the evening.

Bluefin tuna tartare came piled on a crunchy seaweedy batter base, providing a nice greaseless contrast to the fish. But the best thing about this dish was a lovely toasted sesame flavour that had been woven into the tuna, producing another whirlwind of complimentary flavours and textures.

The trio of ceviche is a great way to cover as much ground as possible if you're either new to Lima and ceviches in general, or alternatively if you're a food blogger trying to ingest as much of the menu as possible without causing a scene. All 3 examples contained incredible fresh fish - stone bass, sea bass and more of that lovely bluefin tuna - but I think my favourite was the Classico which had some buttery sweet potato spiked with a remarkably brave amount of chilli.

They found yet another way to present tuna in this dish of gambas, tiger's milk and avocado, which burst with colour and inventiveness, little dots of flavoured oils floating in the tiger's milk. Even if the same raw ingredients had found their way into a number of different dishes, they were all different enough not to feel samey, and to be honest they were all good enough that I would have quite happily eaten 6 or 7 plates of the same dish anyway without complaints.

If there was one single element of the entire meal that I could criticize it was that these lamb chops were a little bit on the flabby side - they needed a bit more heat from the Josper to get a darker crust and possibly to render off a bit more of that fat. However the "corn tamal" underneath was genuinely excellent - packed full of buttery goodness with an addictive soft-yet-distinct texture.

And the other large plate, red prawn quinotto (risotto, made with quinoa) was another comforting and attractive thing, with bits of octopus and plump fresh clams studded into the mix. I didn't try the red prawn - there was only one of them, and it wasn't technically my order - but I believe it was very good, although I'm guessing not quite as good as the Palamós prawns from El Molí...

Anyway there's no point crying over spilt SD cards. Lima's desserts continued the theme of exciting, unique and gently dramatic - cute little Alfajores biscuits were a joy to eat and the accompanying lime sorbet exactly the right kind of thing to match with the rich dulche de leche. And a geometrically pleasing puck of light cheesecake on a delicate biscuit base came with 3 neat blobs of lucuma coulis on top. Lucuma, by the way, is a south American fruit tasting a bit like passion fruit which I'd never even heard of before. There's a lot of things that Lima does that you don't see anywhere else - that's one of the supreme joys of eating there.

So yes, after all these years and even after the new location, I'm still a massive fan of Lima. It's tempting to wonder why there haven't been a whole slew of copycat Peruvian restaurants popping up in its wake over the last decade or so as tends to happen whenever a particular trend takes off (see US-style steakhouses about 15 years ago, or more recently smash burgers) but I have a feeling the reason Lima stands alone (or rather as a pair) even today is because this stuff really isn't easy to pull off. It's a culinary style so far removed from most European kitchen skill sets that doing it at all is only within the ability of a select few and doing it this well is only possible by... well, Lima. In short, if you want to see how good Peruvian food can be without travelling 6,000 miles, you have a choice of two spots in London. Both come extremely highly recommended.

9/10

I was invited to Lima Shoreditch and didn't see a bill. Expect to pay around £150/head I think if you make the most of the drinks list.