Lima, Peru has a cocktail culture all its own. While classic cocktails are seeing a revival in Canada, and I dream of New Orleans when I think about a certain speakeasy in Toronto that made me fall in love with Fernet Branca, Lima couldn’t give two figs about Manhattans, and the only thing “old fashioned” in the touristy Miraflores district are the colonial-style buildings. But when it comes to spicing up Pisco there’s a new wave of bars, lounges and restaurants taking up the torch.
This obviously called for a bar crawl. And who better to do it with than a vacationing professional clown from Chicago who counts a few of the cooks at superstar restaurants, Alinea and Next, as his friends. In one long, long night, we went to five bars on two cocktail-heavy streets. Thankfully we only drank at three of them, but I’ll only tell you why that was the case if you keep reading.
Not every cocktail or cocktail bar is created equal. My first cocktail was my favourite, and the last bar was where the late night Lima party was at, but the one in the middle is an up-and-comer that deserves a loyal clientele.
WHAT WE DRANK:
Strawberry Pisco cocktail – @ Astrid y Gaston, ~ $10 CAD
There’s a wall of glass jars here on the walk past the bar to the bathroom. In it are all kinds of fruit infusing in syrups or alcohols. I saw what looked like lychees but was maybe apricots, another with hot peppers, and one deep red one with strawberries. I didn’t know the jar existed when I tried my strawberry Pisco cocktail with camu camu (sweet and sour jungle fruit) and a sprig of mint and a strawberry that tasted like summer. I just figured all strawberries tasted like summer in Peru. Turns out this is not the case, but it may be be the case at this restaurant since they do such a good job sourcing ingredients. When you plunk strawberries in syrup, however, the flavour comes out and they always taste ripe. It’s a little like jam (jam can only be bad if it’s too sweet, I think), but infused syrups are easier to make. It was a tough choice of a cocktail from the restaurant’s two page menu, but with 25 soles price tags (about $10 CAD each), one was enough, especially when I knew a night of less expensive cocktails was to follow.
My clown friend tried a Pisco cocktail with maracuya (passion fruit) and Huacatay, which is a strong Peruvian herb. There was also maybe some orange in there, because it was definitely less sweet and more acidic. I preferred my drowned strawberry. I couldn’t taste the huacatay in the cocktail but it was great for aesthetics since it stood vertically against the side of the glass. It’s possible they infused that in something too first (syrup or alcohol), but we had to wait for the second bar to get a strong herbal infusion where we could actually taste the herb.
Thyme Gin and Tonic @ Art Deco Lounge, ~ $8 CAD
Turns out thyme in booze can pack a UFC-style punch. Not like a sucker punch to the gut, but more like a well-aimed, intentionally bitter hook. At Art Deco Lounge, a new cocktail bar on Mario Bonilla in Miraflores, they crush fresh thyme leaves (or other herbs or fruit including mint, rose petals, fresh grenadilla, or classic lemons and limes with your choice of gin. A macerado is an infusion in alcohol of fruit, spices or herbs, and when you order a sour you get to choose your alcohol (purists go with Pisco). When you order a “chicalano” (Peruvian drinks generally made with Pisco, ginger ale, or sometimes coke or soda) you get a host of other flavour options. For example, I ordered the aji arnaucho chili pepper chiclano, with chili-infused Pisco. The ginger ale was just sweet enough to calm the heat of the Peruvian chili. Another popular option is the coca-leaf infused macerado (for sours or chiclanos, again), but I can’t tell you about its hallucinogenic effects since I didn’t want to turn myself into an experiment.
The bartenders here made the place worthwhile. It’s new and trying desperately to be trendy, but with 20 soles ($8 CAD) drink prices it turns off a lot of locals. $8 isn’t bad, but when you can get Pisco sours for dirt cheap in other bodegas in the area it’s tough to draw in the crowds. It’s tourist central, after all, so they’re often cheap and bad or expensive and so-so. Still, the ambiance is swanky and I’ll just say it would fit right in in Toronto. It’d probably be the new hot spot there. The two young bartenders who served us were passionate about the drinks, though, explaining things when the clown and I asked, and they looked sincerely disappointed when we left after one drink. It was a good stop during our night but it was time to move on. Probably they saw dollar signs walking out the door, but I would have happily spent a night there if I didn’t feel compelled to find a new and shiny bar down the road.
Next we wandered into La Emolienteria. It’s tiny, with the drinks scrawled in rainbow colours on the wall. The same menu is copied onto a handful of wooden planks to hand around to those who don’t want to crane their necks. It seats about fifteen highschool aged people, and there were about 25 of that type stuffed in the tiny bar. The bus boys and a couple of the bartenders themselves couldn’t have been much older than that. No, really, the crowd was maybe between 19 and 22 years old. So I figured it was a cheap place, because what 19 year old is going to spend money on good alcohol? But the menu looked great, so we went in search of a bar with seats (as there were two more next door) and kept this place as a maybe in case the others were junk.
They were. The first had a short menu with nothing interesting on it cocktail-wise. Mostly beer and regular mixed drinks. And it had bottle service and a trying-too-hard club/lounge feel. So we left despite the abundance of seats.
The next had a huge cocktail list and two seats at the bar, but the drinks menu was mostly standard booze (Bacardi rum, bad vodka) with bottled exotic fruit syrups instead of homemade infusions. When I found out the syrups were store-bought, I stopped being interested. So I dragged the clown back to La Emolienteria where we lucked into two seats at the bar, sandwiched between what would have been my highschool crush if I was a bit younger and a girl who should have stopped at one Emoliente. What’s an Emoliente, you ask? It’s supposedly healthy. It’s a sweetened fruit tea, said our bartender. It kind of has a tea-like flavour – a little bitter, a little fermented. They take an ounce or so of the stuff and throw in a bunch of Pisco to make it boozy (yeah, healthy, right…), and then they crush some mint. Unfortunately the infusion isn’t very intense, so everything we drank tasted weak and watered down. That’s tea for you.
Everything except the worm shot the clown was cajoled into taking by the 21 year old Israeli ex-military bartender who told a few too many stories of shooting insects with guns. He was good at making the clown spend money, though, so there was soon a shot glass with a wriggling worm in front of him. The worm originated in a box in the cupboard and all the bartenders and busboys were laughing at the gringos (us) who’d bought it. This was not some tiny worm at the bottom of a bottle of Mexican mezcal. We’re talking a serious meaty worm about the size of Michael Phelps big toe.
Well, the clown ate it. Down the hatch in one go. And he washed it down with a free shot of chili pepper-infused Pisco on the bartender.
The funny thing about Pisco is you drink it and feel fine. And a few hours later you feel significantly less fine. I remembered this from the last time I was in Lima – the first time that I swore off Pisco. Definition of insanity = doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess I’m a little crazy.
But at least I didn’t eat a worm.
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