My partner adores Peruvian food, primarily for the ceviche. We’ve been to a handful of Peruvian in the city, but this is one of the first that I saw marketing itself to be more on the higher end. The head chef of this restaurant, Rodrigo Fernandini, came from Chiclayo (Peru) and opened this back in late 2023. We were able to make a reservation for 2 at 5:30 PM on a Friday very easily without trouble.

My partner was craving for lomo saltado, and they found this on Yelp. I mentioned to them that we had ordered this via Seamless before, but nonetheless we decided to check out this place in person. They actually have 2 locations near us: either in Astoria or in Sunnyside. The trains towards Astoria are just atrocious on weekends in that there’s like a 15 minute delay between trains. Going on the 7 train would have netted us better towards Sunnyside.

This Peruvian restaurant was also on my partner’s list of cheap eats to try. The menu was quite similar to the prior Peruvian restaurant, Caravan Chicken we went to a few weeks ago. It’s conveniently located off the Ditmars N/W train on Ditmars itself. We arrived here at 7 PM, and there was no line nor patrons inside. We were not sure what to make of this considering how much we enjoyed the last restaurant.

Lately, we’ve been looking for budget type of restaurants outside of the main areas of Manhattan. This restaurant came at a suggestion from my partner’s friend. It’s located pretty close to us on Broadway in Astoria and fairly close to the N subway. It really is a no frills restaurant with a lot of local take out and dine-in traffic. We arrived here around 5 PM on a Sunday evening, and finding a seat for 2 people was pretty straight forward.

We had to go to the Upper East to return some items, and of course that allowed us to also explore some restaurants around that area. I recall Mission Ceviche having a stall in the Gainsvoort/Chelsea food hall, but I never actually tried it. They actually have a few locations in the city, and fortunately we were near their Upper East Side location. My partner is a ceviche fanatic, so we thought we’d take a look.

My partner is fanatical about ceviche, and I am fanatical about lomo saltado. Our level of comparison is Mario’s in Los Angeles, and there has yet been a tolerable comparison to that so far. There are not too many Peruvian options in the Williamsburg area. We’ve been to Chimu Bistro which was decent, and Llama Inn was a little too upscale. On this super sunny and muddy day after getting my hair chopped and despite all the plethora of options for anything but Peruvian, we decided to check out this restaurant based on recommendations.

Pio Pio actually has several stores in the greater New York City. This one is number 8 and is located in Manhattan a few blocks north of Hudson Yards. Remember that the COVID protocols are still applicable. When we walked in, we were seated in an alcove to the left before the stairs that led down to a larger open space dining room. This alcove was pretty nice and it seemed to be catered for parties of 2.

In a forever hunt for the best lomo saltado in NYC, this is another place we tried. This restaurant is located near Vernon where all the restaurants are, and it was relatively easy to walk in without reservations. I got the passion fruit juice with water which was basically passion fruit syrup with water and crushed ice. It was pretty good, but it was pretty obvious that you could probably make this at home.

This bar / restaurant is located on the 6th floor in the Ravel Hotel in Long Island City. The view is fairly nice as you can see Midtown from the east, but it is not stellar since it sits slightly lower than the Queensborough bridge and there are 2 smoke stack obstructions as you look towards the Empire State building. We ordered some bottles of Rose and an entree.

The lomo saltado was ok. The sauces cost 60 cents extra.