mmmm SUSHI

in addition to well-lit streets, paved roads and sidewalks, a party culture and beaches, lima has sushi. lots of it. i've sampled it all, from the supermarket packaged stuff to fast food sushi to the stuff with lamb and chicken in it, but tonight i went to matsuei which has been said to be one of the top 10 sushi places in the world.

well, to be honest, i will still, hands down, opt to eat sashimi off the bathroom floor of kotobuki any day of the week. that might change after my trip to tokyo but anyway, matsuei was pretty top notch.

while the selection of fish wasn't all that impressive (the classics, plus a few newbies), it was more the creative style, peruvian influence kinda thing that does it.

i made a reservation for one (sad, i know) at the bar, and when i arrived they had written my name (correctly!!) on a little card and handed me my hot towel. the menu was long and confusing, so i just asked the sushi chef to give me whatever is Peruvian for Omakase. 

he was super soft spoken, like he was saying something but he was on mute, so i just nodded and smiled, and answered Si! and so he made me some 5, 6, lost count, special tiny courses that were pretty insane.

first there was some paper-thin see-through sliced variety of fish in a tangy sauce. YUM.

then he started making some crazy cone fish roll things and swinging his hands around a little flashy like tom cruise in cocktail. at first i thought, i should order that next! but turns out it, and everything else he slaved over from now on was all for me!

the most normal looking thing was actually this:

eat me

which you are thinking, ok, nicely sliced avocado thing but what you don't see is the tempura octopus inside the rice, and the little stuff on top is seaweed with bits of papaya. don't know what the white is. cheese? doesn't matter. DOUBLE YUM.

didn't even touch the soy sauce, as everything came with its own pairing of TASTY.

there was lots of chopping and super intense precision cutting, and then there was the octopous on rice, which you think, bo-ring, but the octopus was cut in a way so that when he ran the blowtorch over it, these little bits curled up into spirals to make perfect fleurs de lys.

at one point he made a california roll with cream cheese and i wanted to throw my wasabi in his face, but it was for the british people sitting behind me. they deserved my wasabi in their face for ordering that here. fake crab meat, really, people.

then i was served some sort of raw sardine thing (once again, i asked him what it was but the only answer I got was lips quielty moving), where the skin was cut like argyle. INSANE.  

i picked up some pointers for style and new frontiers for the next installment of the wading river home-made-sushi lounge (fyi annika, it will cost ya!).

so i don't know, taking pictures of all of it was tacky, and as much as I tried to e  a   t   s   l   o   w   l   y  to preserve the experience or document it i couldn't. 

30 minutes and 30$ (that's it!!) later, i was out the door.
arigato!