Finally we wen´t for dinner at Astrid y Gaston, the restaurant Martin has been working on for two months. And what a restaurant. It is the best I ever had.
History
Astrid y Gaston is the worlds 18th best restaurant and have newly updated from it´s old quarters in Miraflores and are situated in San Isidro, the business quarters of Lima. The name Astrid y Gaston, means what it is saying, Astrid and Gaston. Gaston is Perus famous chef that have given the Peruvian cuisine world status, and Astrid is his wife. The house, is of old colonial style which where owned by the people who owned San Isidro, and the name is Casa Hasienda Moreyra.
The food
There is four different kitchens and three restaurant within Casa Moreyra. We had the tasting menu of 27 courses, that take the customer all over Peru´s different regions (the coast, the mountains and the jungle) and their respective cuisine. It is an extraordinary experience where the food is perfect and well thought true. It is well balanced and served with a lot of alcohol.
Some nice lady helped us with the first picture. This is the staircase of casa moreyra. Throughout the evening the photos is taken with my Samsung NX 10, that is a pocket DSLR, but sorry to say, don´t perform great in bad light which you will experience soon.
The first three dishes where served on the terass with alcohol. It is (and I quote the menu) Spirits, Roots and herbs, Olives, Carrots, Squid ink and Anticucheras skins.
Astrid y Gaston have a fantastic bathroom, the service personel follow you to the bathroom and show how it works and also give you some historic anecdotes. One fantastic aspect is that the service personel pull in your chair everytime you sit down!
This is Elia in the bathroom.
The rest of the courses are served in another part/another restaurant. Before going there you get to see the kitchen. The service personel guide you through the entire menu and all different drinks and wine. They also have their own ”dish” which is shown later. The above dish show the first dish of the pacific ocean, sea prawn and pickles, anchovy alfahor and seaweed peach. The rest of the menu for this part is: Melon cucumber, sea urchin and clams Ceviche, pisco beach and lobster pacae, maca. The Pisco beach is the service personels own dish.
Here Martin is reading the menu, that also give good desriptions of the regions and other interesting information.
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This is the service- personels dish, a pisco, served in stone bowl.
What you see infront of Martin is the grand menu.
Coming to the desertregion we was served Memories of Cantalloc, Southern asparagus, Mackarel escabeche and Crab, stinging nettle.
This is egg, frosen in nitrogen dioxide which gave a awesome smoking effect when the servicepersonel put it on the plate right in front of you.
In the Andes we where served corn, cheese and rocoto, sacred coca, Huatia and Frutillada, molle.
Huatia, made in dirt in the oven. Is the dirt reused, I asked Martin, he didn´t know. But on the other hand there is a lot of dirt and sand in Peru, so maybe no environmental problem there..
In the Altiplano we where given quinoa sprouts, trout, custard apple and duck, beef shank and watercress and Oca, lamb and sage.
In the Amazon we got Toasted pig jowl and sachaculanto, chocolate, Aguaje, lucuma and purple corn and Zapote, lima.
We where in the end served cold coffe a la La Tasta café, cold extraction and coins.
Environmental impact
It is commonly known and accepted that experiences such as restaurants or going to a concert are more environmental friendly than buying electronic stuff or other material consumption.
In the case of Astrid y Gaston the environmental impact are not the biggest problem, even though there is a lot of consumption of food. But, there is small dishes, where you eat everything. The persons who leave food for trowing away is surely just stupid.
But, on the other hand there would be nice with an environmental brand on the restaurant, stating that the chefs are though in how to save as much food as possible for example, and that the crops are more or less free of chemicals. It would also be nice if they, as a culinary representation of Peru assured that the crops sometimes comes from small scale farmers as well. But these are just my suggestions, I love the restaurant anyway.
And the restaurant have some environmental outlook already. Martin, that worked there for two months, points out that they try to save as much as possible. For example one dish have eggs, but only the yellow part. Then the chefs, Martin tells me, ask the other chefs for example those in patisserie, if they are doing meringues soon or if someone else need the white part of the egg. Martin also highlights the fact that Astrid y Gaston have their own garden, impressing, yes. So they don´t need to buy so much herbs. And it is a big garden as well, that have banana trees for one. I love banana trees and have one at home, not much bananas on that one though..
Overall experience
Need I say that I got everything exactly or exactly as I wanted without hesitation? Five stars of Five possible. Not discussable. And extra cred is given for the interesting china and lovely glasses. The china is made specially for the restaurant, to reflect the different region and some of the glasses was easily recognizable since we had them at home, they where from riedel.
If to point out some negative aspects I would say there where to much alcohol, it was hard to keep up. Im not the person who are the most fond of strong liquor and pisco was served more than once. I am though sure that if I had said something, I would have gotten something else. Another minus was that one of the dishes had to much salt for my taste and the crab in skimmed milk, was no favorite of mine. But as described above, the dishes together was an extraordinary experience, making the negative seem like a stupid thing even to bring up.
Cost: Around 580-630 (ca 1500 kr och 225 us dollars) sol per person depending. It is a fixed price and package, but we added some alcohol (I think), which I don´t feel where needed in the end. This is a very low price for this much food, experience and alcohol.
But here it comes, probably the most disappointing I delivered so far, it is booked until November, if the rumor is true.
Katarina
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