?> {"id":4129,"date":"2010-11-02T19:31:06","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T23:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/?p=4129"},"modified":"2010-11-02T19:31:06","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T23:31:06","slug":"el-balcon-de-don-zacarias-restaurant-chivay-peru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/2010\/11\/el-balcon-de-don-zacarias-restaurant-chivay-peru\/","title":{"rendered":"El Balcon de Don Zacarias Restaurant – Chivay, Peru"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n During our drive from Arequipa to the Colca Valley, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called El Balcon de Don Zacarias in the town of Chivay. Lunch was included as part of our tour package but that wasn’t the case for everyone in our group, and Josh and I were pretty disappointed not to be able to explore restaurants in the town by ourselves. In our experience, tour package restaurants for the most part have served us pretty lousy, bland food that is designed for tourists. See most of my China posts<\/a> for reference.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, since we had apparently already paid for lunch as part of our package, we grudgingly trudged up the stairs and into the restaurant. We were further disappointed to see that it was a buffet, and the few patrons in the restaurant were all clearly tourists. Josh and I took a quick stroll around the buffet to see what the offerings were, and I was pleased to see that the food did look pretty interesting, as we didn’t recognize any dishes. Everything looked homemade and kind of rustic, no fussy presentations or decorations in sight, so I was hoping that we would be eating authentic Peruvian dishes, not a watered down version of Peruvian food for tourists. With everything arranged in pyrex dishes on a long table, it looked sort of like a potluck, rather than a restaurant buffet.<\/p>\n