After lunch, a short visit to the nearby sculpture park – an outdoor area with about three dozen contemporary art sculptures. Long term readers know I’m not often a fan of modern art, so I’ll leave it to y’all to guess if I liked any of these….
From there it was back towards the center of town and a visit to the Santa Lucia park – another that ostensibly has religious reasons for a visit, but the reality is, everyone heads straight for the observation tower on top of he hill…
And finally off to the much touted Jofre restaurant, hidden away on a small side street of the same name, and the home of a quite talked about sort of hotshot young chef. Have to admit, wasn’t impressed, nor happy – maybe it was just a Monday thing, but…
Loved the space, a converted house, with a pretty little garden on the side. Service was amiable if abrupt – another rush job, but with virtually no customers in the place (also, they opened an hour after their posted hours). The first course, a gratineed goat cheese salad – turned out to be a searingly hot plate on which they’d tossed a couple of slices of really poor quality goat cheese, some arugula leaves and cherry tomatoes and stuck it under the broiler for a minute. No seasoning, no nothing except a slight drizzle of honey on the leaves.
The main course, a pastel de jaiba – more or less described as a shepherd’s pie made with crabmeat – was pretty much inedible. It was bitter, unseasoned, and… well, a mess. I barely ate half of it, pushed it away, the waitress, without comment, whisked it off the table and dropped the check without asking about dessert. Oh, and instead of a wine list, they have “whatever bottles we happen to have around that salesmen have dropped off”. Which means they really don’t care about their wine with food, it’s just about making money off of free bottles. Not recommended. Thankfully, as you’ll see in the next posts, the rest of my food experiences were far better.
Posts may be a bit sporadic, we’re traveling around northern Peru and don’t always have wi-fi access….
Jofré was great when it opened but that was a while ago now. They used to change the menu seasonally but seem to have gotten stuck on that goat cheese salad. There are so many great places; I have found your choices interesting but they wouldn’t be mine.
Well, cheers to many different kinds of palettes. Please Frances don’t be greedy – do tell about your presumably more interesting choices to dine.
For me, I certainly would have tried the crab pie, just because it sounds so delicious, however there’s always a dud from time to time (see above) but I’m particularly interested in some of the sea creatures you snapped – sea squirts, what in the ocean world are they? If we eat enough of them do we grow webbing between our toes?
From a friend who responded to this on Facebook, more details on piure
Oh, and Frances, I was going to say much he same as Kevin did – I was there for four days, wish I’d had some other suggestions to consider from a local!
Also, it is heavily rumored that Santiago sits under a haze for most of the year. It’s certainly not noticeable late in the year judging by your photos. If it is true, what a tragedy, the mountains are wonderful.
I hope you’re enjoying what northern Peru has to offer – can’t wait to see your photos when you log-on.