We were pretty excited for our meal at Maido. Watching it climb the world’s 50 best, we figured this would be a really interesting meal. It was also our first proper Nikkei (Japanese Peruvian fusion) experience.
This was only a short walk from our hotel in Miraflores which was nice. The building looked kind of like a modern apartment. The dining room was quite nice, but very open and not as intimate feeling as many other top calibre restaurants we’ve been to. It was maybe a tad small for the amount of guests that were there.
Food was good, but quite a bit more rich dishes than I would have thought. For example, we had a crab dish which was loaded with a type of hollandaise like sauce on top. We really didn’t enjoy that. The mini ramen portion was pretty unique and had squid instead of ramen noodles. Most dishes were seafood based with a couple of other proteins, most notable the wagyu short rib at the end. I think we weren’t really expecting that. I figured we’d have more raw fish dishes but most were cooked. Our favourite dish was the torouni which was a small tuna belly and urchin bite but was absolutely delicious. We were just craving more of that.
By the time our meal finished we were so overly full. The portions were often quite big and heavy so we were done by the time desert courses came: Dessert was cocoa based and was pretty good but was hard to enjoy when were so stuffed.
Wine list was quite good, thank god we didn’t do the full pairing because we would have been so full. We did some South American whites by the glass and finished with a red and it was solid overall.
The overall experience was good but to say it is the 6th best in the world, we didn’t really get that vibe. It did not have a 3 Michelin star feel of service like we have received at most 3 star restaurants we’ve been to. Central, Kjolle and MIL were the only restaurants that gave us that feel in Peru. It was solid, I’d say don’t miss it in Lima but to stack rank it that high, you’re creating very high expectations and they weren’t met for us.
by ochief19