By Mira Ciganek

It was quitting time one Friday evening in Lower Manhattan. The Oculus buzzed with commuters catching trains and tourists snapping photos. But for Edgar Lanegra, the workday was far from over. 

Lanegra is the head chef and co-owner of Cebichelsea, a Peruvian restaurant nestled beneath the Oculus in Gansevoort Market. 

As he prepared for the dinner rush, a pot of seco norteno–braised beef–simmered on the stove and the tangy aroma of citrus filled the air. Most would simply see Lanegra selling Peruvian staples from a brightly colored storefront. Lanegra counters that he is selling a gastronomic experience.

The experience is beautiful, he said. “La experiencia es hermosa.”

Hispanic food, in its many varieties, has become a worldwide favorite. This is nothing new. New York boasts a taco truck on nearly every corner and a $16 jalapeno margarita in most restaurants. But news of Peru’s culinary prowess has only recently permeated the global food scene. Opened in November of 2020, Cebichelsea is one of many in a growing trend of Peruvian restaurants.

“Mexican food is everywhere, but this is unique,” said Ruby Ortiz, a customer and friend of Lanegra. “The spices used make the flavors so different.” Ortiz works across from Cebichelsea at a neighboring restaurant. She translated for Lanegra and described the variety of dishes he offers.

In addition to serving Peruvian classics like ceviche and lomo saltado–steak stir fry–Lanegra leans into the fusion aspect of the cuisine. Many of the meat and rice dishes borrow from Chinese food. And in a nod to Japanese cuisine, Lanegra substitutes cow heart for octopus in his take on anticucho. 

“At first it was very difficult because the palate, the American palate, the tourist’s palate, is different from that of the Latino palate,” he said. 

Cebichelsea serves a variety of traditional and experimental Peruvian dishes.

This fusion of different flavors and ingredients is central to Peruvian cuisine. It is often influenced by dishes from parts of Africa, Italy, Japan and China, with unique terminology for each blend. “Our Chinese food is called Chifa and Japanese food is called Nikkei,” said María Eugenia Abastos, a freelance chef based in Lima, Peru. 

Born and raised in Lima, Abastos has worked for 13 years as a chef and has watched the capital city of Peru rise to the top of the global food scene. “Lima right now, it’s a culinary destination,” she said. 

Lima holds three of the world’s fifty best restaurants and the country as a whole was voted the world’s leading culinary destination nine times in the last ten years. 

Abastos notes the exodus in recent years to bring these flavors to other countries. “More of us are going outside to the United States and Europe to open Peruvian restaurants,” she said.

Elena Soledad is one of many excited to see her family’s culture expand into cities like New York. Though she was born and raised in Brooklyn, Soledad was adopted from Peru as a baby. Nothing compares to her experience traveling home and eating her mother’s Pachamanca, but she commends restaurants in the U.S. for creating representation for Peru.

“I think they do a great job at bringing awareness of the food and the culture,” she said. “I do wish that a lot more Amazonian dishes and Andean dishes were highlighted as well.”

Soledad and her birth family is Quechua, an indigenous group predominantly based in the Peruvian Andes. She is hopeful that Peruvian restaurants in the States will expand past the fan favorites to represent the diversity present in her home country.

“For so long, people really didn’t know where Peru was. They didn’t really know anything about Peru. It was like a little paragraph in your textbook.” But now things are changing.

“It’s beautiful to see that it’s being recognized,” Soledad said. “The word of Peruvian food is getting out there.”