Eating is the main reason to spend time in Lima. Over the last twenty years the city has become one of the great food capitals of the world: two or three of its restaurants are usually on the World's 50 Best list in any given year, and the cooking a few rungs down is still outstanding. The signature dish is ceviche — raw fish "cooked" in lime juice with red onion, rocoto chilli and sweet potato, traditionally eaten at lunchtime. Every neighbourhood has its favoured cevichería; the ones in the working-class district of Surquillo are cheaper and often better than their fancier Miraflores equivalents.
Beyond ceviche, look out for tiradito (sashimi-cut raw fish with a Peruvian twist), causa limeña (a cold layered potato terrine), ají de gallina, lomo saltado (the Peruvian-Chinese wok-fried beef that is the national comfort food), anticuchos (grilled beef hearts, best from a street cart), and the Peruvian-Japanese nikkei cuisine that grew out of the city's large Japanese-descended population. The world-famous fine-dining places — Central, Maido, Astrid y Gastón, Kjolle, Mayta — are concentrated in Miraflores and Barranco and need to be booked weeks or months ahead. For something more approachable, the old-school cevicherías La Mar and Pescados Capitales, the bistro Isolina in Barranco, and the chifa (Peruvian-Chinese) restaurants of the centre are reliably excellent.