Chapter 28
Two Many Peruvians

You can't tell the restaurants without a menu

In Union Square (which is, of course, triangular, see Chapter XX) there is a Peruvian restaurant. Or there are two Peruvian restaurants. Sort of. There are two restaurants in the same block that have the same name. One of them is a small, informal place, only eight or nine tables, serves a lunch-ish menu including many grilled meat items (grilled pork, grilled chicken, grilled gizzards, grilled beef heart, grilled tripe, etc., how authentic, yum, yum), and seems to be fairly popular. About five doors down the street is another restaurant of the same name, much larger, with a very different menu consisting mainly of seafood (fish, shrimp, mussels, ceviche, etc.). This one is a white-tablecloth sort of place, including a young hostess in native costume and higher prices.

We were heading out to lunch, selected this one as a new place that would expand our restaurant list, and we went to what we thought was the right restaurant. We were completely fooled. When we had looked on the web, we noted one address right in the square, and that's where we headed. We saw one with the right name on it, it happened to be the lunch place, and that's where we stopped. If we had parked accidentally on a different street of the non-square square, we would have come upon the other restaurant first and gone in there. It was only by wandering around the neighborhood after lunch that we discovered our mistake. Well, not entirely a mistake. I mean, the food was quite good and we will go back. Or, rather, we will probably go back to the other one, that is, the dinner place, just to try items from a different menu.

I don't know the history of this split, which came first, the lunch place or the dinner place. I will ask about the history sometime .

No, I did not order the gizzards-heart-and-tripe special.

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