Latin American

I had been to Zoilo (MMm), the sister restaurant of Casa Malevo, the week before and was really looking forward to going to Casa Malevo as my friends Katrina and Love, who live quite close to Casa Malevo, have been telling me how amazing it is and that Tony Blair lives close to the restaurant and sometimes goes there. Both restaurants serve Argentinian food, but Zoilo seems more casual and people mainly sit by the bar, whilst most people in Casa Malevo sit by wooden tables and chairs, and the inside reminded me a lot of the Argentinian steak restaurants I visited when I was in Buenos Aires, so it did feel authentic, which I really liked.

I first had Asian and Latin American fusion food in Nobu a few years ago, but ever since this type of food has become very popular with the openings of Asia de Cuba, Sushi Samba and now Sushinho. Sushinho blends Brazilian and Japanese food and tries to serve you food that you would find in Rio and Sao Paolo prepared by some of the 1.8 million Japanese people that now live in Brazil.

This is one of the hottest openings of this year that everyone is talking about. SushiSamba is a Japanese/ Peruvian/ Brazilian fusion restaurant (so a bit like Nobu in this way) that already has branches in New York, Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas and a few weeks ago they opened their first restaurant in Europe, in London. SushiSamba is located on the 39^th floor of the Heron Tower, in the financial city area of London, and is now supposed to be the 2^nd highest restaurant in Europe (only to be upstaged by Duck & Waffle which is located in the same building but on the 40^th floor). I went there on a very hot Friday a few weeks ago for lunch and the view from the 39^th floor was absolutely amazing, the best you can get in London in my view and tourists should be taken here not to the London Eye. 

I have been waiting for months for this place to open and finally it has!!! Lima (also the capital of Peru, but I am sure you know this) is a Peruvian restaurant based in Fitzrovia, and London this year seems to have been overtaken by a craze for Peruvian food. First Ceviche opened in Soho and now Lima, and all the food blogs and magazines are writing about Peruvian food and restaurants these days. I went to Peru 2 months ago and absolutely loved the country and thought the food was excellent, and as I did not like the Soho restaurant Ceviche that much when I went there a few months ago, I was hoping that with the opening of Lima, there will now be a solid, good Peruvian restaurant in London. 

My boyfriend and I had arrived to Puno, small town in Peru, and we wanted to go for dinner. I checked my very trusted Frommers guide for suggestions and it did not speak very highly of any restaurant in Puno, but the one that stood out was La Casona, which calls itself a "museum-restaurant". It was hard to find La Casona as the Frommers guide had made a mistake in one of their maps, so we went to the wrong place looking for La Casona, but in the end we found it on the busiest Puno street. La Casona means big house and you enter the door from the street and then have to walk upstairs to the restaurant. To be honest with you it did look old school with a nice Spanish charm with lace tablecloths, high wooden chairs, but I had very different expectations when they said it was a “museum restaurant” as there were not that many things to look at really. It had some antiques and religious canvasses, but not enough to make you feel as if you were sitting in a very memorable dining room.