Backstory: Incan fusion at a cevichería near you.

Gastón Acurio pops a fried Andean corn kernel in his mouth. Peruvian cuisine, the acclaimed chef pronounces, is about to take the gastronomical world by storm. He dips a yucca chip in the aji amarillo - yellow chili - table sauce and smiles.

Move over, sushi. Make room, pizza. Step aside, tacos. There's a new fish on the block. Ceviche: raw fish (or shellfish) diced in cubes and marinated in lime juice, coriander, and hot peppers, served with raw onions, sweet potatoes, and corn. It's Peru's flagship dish, the epitome of the cultural and geographic fusion that defines this society, and has come to define its food: Inca hot peppers, potatoes from the Andes, Spanish onions, limes from the coastal valleys, Chinese spices, and a Japanese approach to preparing the fish, fresh out of the Pacific Ocean.

Just as sushi bars, pizzerias, and taquerías have taken over the international food scene - from Jerusalem to Nairobi to American strip malls - so, Chef Acurio has designs for Peruvian cuisine and the ingredients unique to this country. He envisions suburban supermarket shelves filled with Peruvian spices and fruit like the small, tart yellow limes so critical to the cuisine.

Mexican restaurants were hard to find outside the Western Hemisphere 20 years ago, and now they're as ubiquitous as Starbucks, points out the Cordon Bleu-trained Acurio, who owns a dozen restaurants in Peru and around South America. "Why can't we dream of 200,000 Peruvian restaurants in 20 years?"

The ceviche arrives at your table here, at Acurio's hip La Mar cevichería a few blocks from Lima's beach boardwalk, in a cocktail glass, garnished with ginger. And that's just the appetizer. For, while a cevichería serves ceviche, of course, it also offers much, much more. Like antipasti is to the pepperoni-and-cheese slice, yakitori is to the California roll, and chile relleno is to the basic burrito - so a cevichería features causas (Peruvian yellow potato topped with fish), anticuchos (Peruvian kebabs) and tacu tacus (fried fish on beds of creamy refried Peruvian lima beans and rice) to go with the beloved ceviche.

And all this, promises Acurio, nodding to some fans beaming at him from across the room, is coming, very soon, to a cevichería near you. The US, for one, seems ready for this "next big thing" in cuisine. Last year, San Francisco's Peruvian Limón restaurant got a nod as Bon Appetit's "Hottest Cuisine" of the year. In Portland, The Oregonian named the Peruvian Andina restaurant of the year. And, this year, in Seattle, talk of the town is the Peruvian restaurant Mixtura.

Meanwhile, master chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa of the famed Nobu restaurants in London, New York, Beverly Hills, and Tokyo frequently mentions his three years in Peru as one of the greatest influences on his style, leading to the creation of such dishes as yellow tail sashimi with jalapeños.

Acurio, whose TV cooking show has made him a veritable superstar from the Amazon basin to any Andean cranny that can receive a TV signal, is the face of this culinary revolution that started here a decade ago.

Back then, there was not one cooking school in the Peruvian capital, says Acurio. Now, there are 22 - more, he boasts, than in any other city in the world. These days, TV cooking shows (especially his) are all the rage, cookbooks (Acurio has several) are bestsellers, and it's near impossible for a visitor to get through a day without being asked with faux modesty: "So, what do you think of our food?"

Page: 1 | 2