Best Restaurants in Lima, Peru: Maido, Central and Where to Eat Ceviche, Chifa and Nikkei

Lima's World's 50 Best restaurants, and why the list changes on November 4

The current list is The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025, announced in Turin on June 19, 2025. Four Lima restaurants are in the 2025 top 50: Maido at No. 1, Kjolle at No. 9, Mérito at No. 26 and Mayta at No. 39. No other city has two restaurants in the top ten.

Central is missing from that list, and the reason confuses people. It was named The World's Best Restaurant in 2023, and past winners are retired into a group called Best of the Best and can no longer be voted on. Central is not ranked first, fifth or fiftieth. It is out of the ranking for good.

Maido follows it this year, and it happens in Lima. The 2026 awards will be held in Lima on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, the first time the ceremony has come to South America. When the new list is read out, Maido leaves the ranking, a new No. 1 is named, and every position in the table below is out of date. If you are reading this after that night, check the new list before you quote this one.

Do not plan the trip around a single reservation. All five are in two neighboring districts, and the one with a table on your dates is the right one. Kjolle shares an address with Central and is the restaurant of Pía León, who ran Central's kitchen before opening it in 2018 and was named The World's Best Female Chef in 2021. Mérito, also opened in 2018, puts the cooking of Juan Luis Martínez's native Venezuela together with Peruvian produce. Mayta is Jaime Pesaque's restaurant, and Maido is Nikkei cooking, Japanese technique on Peruvian ingredients, at its most ambitious.

There are no MICHELIN star restaurants in Lima

People search for MICHELIN star restaurants in Lima, Peru several hundred times a month. There are none, and that is not a verdict on the cooking. MICHELIN has never published a guide to Peru. In South America the countries it covers are Argentina and Brazil.

It is worth saying plainly because pages exist that hand out stars to Lima restaurants anyway: three for Central, three for Maido, two for Kjolle. Those stars were never awarded. Treat any star count attached to a restaurant in Lima as an error, and use the 50 Best list for this city. For where the stars really are, see which city has the most MICHELIN stars.

Where to eat ceviche in Lima, and why it has to be lunch

The local rule first. Ceviche is a daytime dish. The serious cevicherías open around noon and are finished by late afternoon. Plan it for dinner and you will end up eating it in a hotel.

The plate is simple: cubes of raw fish, lime juice, chili, salt and sliced red onion, with a slice of sweet potato and large-kernel corn on the side. The fish is marinated for minutes, not hours, a change credited to Lima's Japanese-Peruvian cooks in the 1970s. The marinade is called leche de tigre, and many cevicherías pour you a small glass of it. Some kitchens blend yellow chili into it, which turns the whole plate gold.

• La Mar, Av. La Mar 770, Miraflores. Gastón Acurio's cebichería and the right first lunch. Its own hours are noon to 5 pm Monday to Thursday, noon to 7 pm on Friday, and 11:30 am to 5:30 pm on weekends and holidays. There is no dinner service.
• El Mercado, Hipólito Unanue 203, Miraflores. Rafael Osterling's seafood restaurant. Lunch only.
• Al Toke Pez, Av. Angamos Este 886, Surquillo. A counter with a few stools, run by Tomás Matsufuji and featured in the Netflix series Street Food: Latin America. Order the combinado, the mixed plate.

La Mar is the one everyone names, and they are right. Al Toke Pez is the one you will talk about afterward.

Nikkei and chifa: the two cuisines Lima built

Nikkei is Japanese-Peruvian cooking. Chifa is Chinese-Peruvian, Cantonese at its root. Both are everyday food in Lima, not novelty, and a guide that skips them is describing a different city.

Maido is Nikkei as a tasting menu. For the same idea ordered dish by dish, go to Osaka at Av. Pardo y Aliaga 660 in San Isidro. Osaka opened in Lima in 2002 and has since spread to Buenos Aires, Santiago, Miami and Madrid, among other cities. A note on the name: this Osaka is a Lima restaurant group. If you want the Japanese city, that is a different guide to the best food in Osaka.

For chifa, Chifa Titi at Av. Javier Prado Este 1212 in San Isidro is the one Lima itself keeps voting for. The Chan family has run it since the late 1950s, when it began near the Barrio Chino, and recently added a second restaurant in La Molina. Wa Lok has two addresses: Jr. Paruro 878 in the Barrio Chino, and Av. Angamos Oeste 700 in Miraflores. Go to Paruro for the neighborhood and to Miraflores for the short walk home.

The dish that shows what chifa did to Peruvian cooking is lomo saltado: strips of beef seared in a wok with onion, tomato and soy sauce, served with fries and white rice on the same plate. Two starches is not a mistake. It is the point.

Criollo cooking: where to eat the old Lima dishes

Criollo food is what Lima cooked before anyone ranked it: stews, offal, rice, potatoes and chili. Three addresses cover it.

• Isolina, Av. San Martín 101, Barranco. José del Castillo's tavern. The portions are built for sharing, so order for the table and order less than you think.
• Antigua Taberna Queirolo, Av. San Martín 1090, Pueblo Libre. A tavern tied to the Queirolo winery that has traded since about 1880. Go for the pisco and the room.
• Astrid y Gastón, Av. Paz Soldán 290, San Isidro. Gastón Acurio's flagship opened in Miraflores in 1994 and now occupies Casa Moreyra, a former hacienda house. It is the restaurant most of this list descends from.

Where to eat in Lima, by district

Lima is a province of 43 districts and about ten million people. Nearly every restaurant in this guide is in three of them, side by side along the coast.

• Miraflores. The clifftop district where most visitors stay. Maido is at Calle San Martín 399, and Rafael, Rafael Osterling's restaurant, is on the same street at number 300. La Mar and Mayta share an avenue too, Av. La Mar, at 770 and 1285. El Mercado is nearby.
• Barranco. Directly south of Miraflores. Central and Kjolle at Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Mérito, and Isolina. Three of the five restaurants in the table above are here.
• San Isidro. The business district north of Miraflores. Astrid y Gastón, Osaka and Chifa Titi.
• Surquillo. Inland from Miraflores and less polished. Al Toke Pez is here.
• Centro Histórico and the Barrio Chino. The colonial center around the Plaza Mayor, and Chinatown a short walk from it, where Wa Lok has its Paruro address. A daytime trip.
• Pueblo Libre. A residential district further north, worth the taxi for Antigua Taberna Queirolo.

One correction to most itineraries: Lima's airport is not in Lima. Jorge Chávez International Airport is in Callao, a separate province, 17 kilometers from Miraflores, and its new terminal opened on June 1, 2025. A dinner near the airport is a dinner in Callao.

How to book and when to eat in Lima

• Book the ranked restaurants first. Everything else can wait until you land. Central's own site lists seatings from 12:45 to 1:30 pm for lunch and 7:00 to 8:30 pm for dinner, Monday to Saturday.
• Eat ceviche early. Sit down by 1 pm. La Mar closes at 5 pm most days, and El Mercado serves lunch only.
• Check Mondays. Astrid y Gastón is closed on Mondays, and Central is closed on Sundays. Read the restaurant's own page for the day you want before you build a day around it.
• Watch the first week of November 2026. The 50 Best ceremony is in Lima on November 4. Expect the ranked dining rooms to be full around it, and expect every ranking in this guide to change that night.

Lima is not only a fine dining city. In June 2026 Time Out named it the best city in the world for food, on a survey in which residents rated it the most affordable city on the list for eating out. For how that ranking is built, see the best food cities in the world. Other cities are on the destinations page.

Why a search for Lima restaurants also finds Brooklyn and Queens

Of 48 common search phrases that combine Lima with restaurants, 11 are for three businesses in the United States. They account for about 4,700 of 34,500 monthly searches. Lima 33 is in Little Neck, Queens. Lima Restaurant and Pisco Bar is in Naples, Florida. The third is the odd one: Liman, a restaurant on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, which is not the word Lima at all. It only contains it. Count the Peruvian restaurant brands abroad that are named after the city and the share rises to roughly 23 percent.

Add Peru to the search and the problem goes away, which is why this guide says Lima, Peru in its title.

Best restaurants in Lima, Peru: common questions

What is the best restaurant in Lima, Peru? On the current ranking, Maido. It was named No. 1 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025 on June 19, 2025. Central won the same title in 2023 and is no longer ranked. The 2026 list will be announced in Lima on November 4, 2026.

Are there MICHELIN star restaurants in Lima, Peru? No. MICHELIN does not publish a guide to Peru, so no restaurant in Lima holds a star. Lists that give Central or Maido three stars are wrong.

What food is Lima known for? Ceviche, tiradito, causa, lomo saltado, ají de gallina, anticuchos, chifa, Nikkei cooking and the pisco sour.

Can you eat ceviche for dinner in Lima? Some restaurants will serve it, but the traditional cevicherías are lunch places. La Mar closes at 5 pm Monday to Thursday.

Which district of Lima has the best restaurants? Miraflores and Barranco, which are next to each other. Maido and Mayta are in Miraflores. Central, Kjolle and Mérito are in Barranco. San Isidro adds Astrid y Gastón, Osaka and Chifa Titi.

Is Lima's airport in Lima? No. Jorge Chávez International Airport is in Callao, a separate province, 17 kilometers from Miraflores.