It is also quite a tourist influenced city, firmly established on the gringo trail as a staging post and good place to stay on the way to Machu Picchu. There is a lot more to the city than that though, many travellers find themselves staying a lot longer than they planned once they experience the city.
Because of the number of travellers there are also plentiful tourist restaurants offering tourist menus. Gemma and Tim clued us into the good value of Tourist menus in Peru while we were in Puno. These menu's are usually between 15 and 25 soles for 2 or 3 courses and a soft drink. You can find these is pretty much all of the tourist restaurants offering tourist fare in Cusco's main square.
These are great if you are travelling on a budget but to a certain extent you get what you pay for, although the meals are usually ok the are not haut cuisine. we tried a higher end 25 Sole menu which the consisted of a decent soup starter and followed by meat, potatoes and a couple of vegetables. The meat brochetas were good but the vegetables were bland and there was no gravy or sauce so it was a touch dry.
We decided after the tourist menu that it wasn't really enjoyable and that trying the local food was too important to us for us to eat too many more tourist menus. We decided to control costs by sharing starters and mains and not drinking too much alcohol.
After our dalliance and disappointment with the tourist menu we decided to try some of Cusco's more famed restaurants, starting with Chi cha. This is something of a Peruvian success story with a number of branches in the major Peruvian cities offering modern twists on standard Peruvian dishes.
The decor is certainly great as are the pisco sours. Our starter was a selection of 4 different fish dishes, which were very tasty. the mains we chose were a more traditional meat stew (for me), which was massive, tasty but not life changing. My fiancée also had a traditional dish, stuffed peppers with Andean cheese.
We even stretched to a dessert for the sake of research having and egg yolk caramel mousse with a merengue topping, this was literally the sweetest, richest thing I have ever eaten, even between 2 of us we failed to eat half of it!
For the money (40-60 soles, 10-15 pounds per main) chi cha is ok, but you have the feeling that you are paying a for the name, reputation and experience as much as for the quality.
The best food we had in Cusco was at a restaurant on the plaza de armas (in between maccy d's and kfc). Limo is Cusco's most surprising restaurant, despite being some 3000 metres above sea level and 7 hours drive from lake titicaca it has built quite a reputation for its sushi. There are seven different types of sushi roll to choose from ranging from the regular California rolls to a house concoction (Limo roll) which had a filling of breaded fish, avacado and cream cheese covered in a sweet chilly jam. The also have a menu of interesting twists in traditional Peruvian dishes.
When we first went we had a 5 piece limo roll to share as a starter which I followed with an excellent tuna main. The sushi was so good we returned for later in the week to try 4 different types of rolls (which cost about 18 pounds).
If you are in cusco and fancy stretching you budget a little I would look no further than Limo, it is definitely worth a visit.
The other restaurant we ate at was the inka grill. This is also on the main square (plaza de armas) but offers a more straight down the line menu of traditional Andean dishes. It may be (slightly) more expensive than most of the places on the square but the quality is also reliable.
Cusco really impressed with its excellent array of restaurants and bars (see my previous post about the pisco museum). I would highly recommend spending a few days in Cusco as part of any Machu Picchu trip as the city has lots to offer.
Pictures show Limo rolls and tuna steak also from limo. From Chi Cha the 4 fish starter, multiple meat stew and stuffed peppers. The final image is a view of Cusco.
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