Peru

At a Lima cevichería the cook squeezes lime over just-landed fish and it seems to cook before your eyes — ceviche, the raw catch turned firm and bright with citrus, red onion and a knock of chilli, eaten at noon while it’s at its freshest. Peru folds desert coast, high Andes and Amazon into one country, and the food carries all three at once, layered with wave after wave of arrivals — Spanish, African, Chinese, Japanese, Italian — all stirred into what locals call comida criolla.

The foundations run deep and ancient: hundreds of native potatoes, corn in every colour, quinoa off the altiplano. From that base come lomo saltado, beef stir-fried Chinese-style with tomato, onion and chips; anticuchos, marinated beef-heart skewers smoking over a street grill; and ají de gallina, shredded chicken in a warm, spiced walnut-and-cheese sauce over yellow potato. In the highlands, cooks still bury meat and tubers over fire-heated stones for pachamanca. Raise a foaming pisco sour to the lot.