Street Eating II: Anticuchos & Buñuelos
With less than 2 days until Marco’s wedding we really shouldn’t be risking life and limb eating off the streets but after a long day of running around we were really in the mood to eat something delicious, fast and potentially life-threatening.
Part of the charm of this meal is the attention that is lavished upon you once your car gets within a few yards of the street corner where the food is sold. Representatives of each restaurant run up to your windows and begin shoving and elbowing each other to gain purchase on your vehicle while calling out the name of their respective establishment. In this case two teenagers representing La Juanita and La Morena fought for our attention while we had a brief but serious discussion regarding our dining choices. Ultimately we opted with La Morena after remembering the curse associated with the mummy Juanita that was discovered in Peru a handful of years back.
This was hands down not only the best meal I’ve had since arriving here, but the best meal I’ve had in years. We both ordered Anticuchos, which after 5 or so minutes were delivered directly to our car. Unfortunately the picture came out a bit blurry, but you can definitely still get the idea of the high-caliber cuisine we’re dealing with here:
Anticuchos are chunks of grilled beef heart that have been marinated in vinegar and spices until they reach the utmost limit of how much flavor they can possibly contain. Beef heart requires a little more chewing than regular meat, but it’s so juicy and flavorful that it is worth every ounce of mastication necessary to get this coronary delight into your stomach.
After finishing our plates, which came to a combined cost of a little over 3 dollars, Marco suggested we try a dessert called buñuelos. This was my first experience with the plate, which somehow managed to even top the anticuchos we had just eaten:
The ring-shaped dessert is a sweet squash fritter served over a sugar cane syrup that has a slight orange flavor to it. It has a sort of crunchy funnel cake exterior with an almost crepe-like interior and believe me when I tell you no amount of exaggeration will do this dessert justice. It’s eaten by tearing the rings into chunks and dipping them into the honey sauce and despite the impressive size of the stack I was served, the whole thing had disappeared off my plate in a matter of minutes.
Before leaving, the kitchen staff was kind enough to let us take a photo of them bringing delicious to life:
