La Trattoria di Mambrino

This has been one of our favorite restaurants for years now. I did a review on their Bodega restaurant in January. It received an almost perfect score. La Trattoira di Mambrino, Ugo and Sandra's first restaurant, is even better. You can find both of them from time to time making the rounds at the restaurants. They stop to greet most of the tables personally.

We recently visited on a weekday night. It was our first time that we've been able to sit in the back area (only a year or so old) near the wine cellar. We've previously sat at the bar (fantastic drinks!) and in the main room a number of times.

The service, as expected, was fantastic. The waiter knew every detail about every dish and certainly appeared as if he had sampled them all! This sort of knowledge is extremely rare in Peru (where many waiters don't get to eat any of the food at the restaurant). His descriptions and recommendations were right on!

The environment was relaxing and comfortable. There was music in the background sung by Italian artists (in Spanish) like Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, and Eros Ramazzotti. We weren't far from the brick oven where they were preparing fresh breads. The aroma was great!

The big surprise for us was that the menu had changed. They have added many new seafood dishes. The most exciting new additions include Peruvian octopus. La Trattoria has had an octopus appetizer for years. It was always great, but left you wanting more. The problem was that there were not enough selections of main dishes that included octopus or seafood.

Our appetizer was a new grilled octopus skewer with pallar sauce that was extremely tender (melts in your mouth) and tasty. For main dishes, we had:

Mashed potatoes with a center of grilled octopus and portobello mushrooms. The presentation was great and the taste was even better! All 3 of the flavors combined well and I was extremely happy with my selection.

Fettuccine with octopus, capers, olive oil, and olives. There were some other flavorful touches, but those are the standouts. The octopus was very tender and had an amazing flavor. The whole thing worked together well and my wife was in heaven.

Finally we had Seared Tuna with an arugula salad in dijon sauce. The tuna was top quality and seared perfectly. The flavor was exactly what I was craving (yes, I stole a good portion from our guest). The salad was a perfect match. The dish was light yet extremely satisfying. Almost every trip to Lima we search out a really good Tuna dish. We are very pleased to say that one can now be found at La Trattoria.

This has been our location for numerous Valentine's, birthday, and other special events. It has never dissappointed. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys fine cuisine. I would even say that it is a 'must visit' location for any trip to Lima.

Quality: 10
Flavor: 10
Presentation: 10
Selection: 10
Value: 9
Environment: 10
Bathrooms: 10
Overall: 10

Back in Arequipa: Greeted by a 12 hour power outage

Well I've been out of town for a bit lately for business. Now I've only been back in Arequipa for about 5 days and there has already been another power outage. This one was scheduled for 5am until noon on Sunday the 14th. But for an unknown reason, the power did not come back on until after 5:30pm on Sunday. We made about 40 calls to the electric company and none of them were answered. I'm not sure what areas were effected by the outage, but certainly Cayma was among them.