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destination · Lima
Lima has the world's best restaurant and a curfew problem: the honest split-city guide
Review of Lima
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Share your experienceLima earned its current bragging rights the hard way. In June 2025, Maido, chef Mitsuharu Tsumura's Nikkei restaurant in Miraflores, was named the World's Best Restaurant by the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, with Kjolle, Pia Leon's restaurant, landing at number 9 the same year. Maido runs a single tasting menu, the Maido Experience, ten-plus courses with no a la carte option, starting around S/1,295 per person (roughly $331) before any wine pairing, with pairings running S/1,985 to S/2,525. Central, Virgilio Martinez's altitude-themed tasting menu restaurant, sits nearby in the same price bracket, with its Mundo en Desnivel and Alturas Mater Vegetal menus running about PEN 1,600 to 1,630 per person (roughly $420 to $440) before pairings, and reservations get genuinely hard to land during the June through September high season, so booking months out matters more than it does almost anywhere else in South America. That is the postcard version. The honest version is that Lima is a split city, and treating it as one neighborhood will get you either bored or robbed. Miraflores and Barranco, the coastal districts where most visitors actually stay and eat, are comfortable to walk by day and generally fine on well-lit streets at night, Barranco's nightlife strip included, provided you keep phones out of reach of scooters and use a rideshare between far-apart bars. Lima's historic center, Lima Centro, with its colonial plazas and UNESCO-listed architecture, is a legitimate daytime sightseeing draw and a place most guides and locals tell you to leave before dark. The U.S. State Department has Peru at Level 2, Exercise Increased Caution, as of May 2025, with a Crime C indicator flagging widespread violent and organized crime and limited police capacity in places, and it separately assesses Lima as a high-threat location for crime affecting official U.S. interests, though crime in Lima reportedly fell about 11.1 percent from January to July 2025. Getting in got easier in 2025: Jorge Chavez International's new $2.4 billion terminal opened June 1, 2025, roughly three times the size of the old one, with 46 gates versus 19 previously and a second runway operating since April 2023. Getting from that airport into the city is where the friction starts. Official airport taxi desks in arrivals quote fixed fares, typically S/60 to 95 to Miraflores depending on time of day, and that premium buys real safety: unofficial touts outside the terminal doors have been linked to express kidnappings where passengers are driven to ATMs, so skipping the counter to save a few soles is not a smart trade. Inside the city, Uber, Cabify, and InDriver are the safer default over hailing a taxi off the street; InDriver works differently in that you propose a fare and drivers accept, decline, or counter it rather than getting a fixed quote upfront. Money-wise, the sol has been stable through mid-2026, trading around 3.39 to 3.40 soles per dollar, and Lima remains one of the cheaper big Latin American capitals to eat in day to day: a menu del dia set lunch, soup, a main like lomo saltado, and a drink, runs about 12 to 15 soles, around $3 to $4, in tourist-adjacent areas and closer to 9 or 10 soles in local neighborhoods, a gap of literally hundreds of dollars per person from a Central tasting menu at the same latitude.
What was great
The food scene is not hype. Maido holding the World's Best Restaurant title as of the 2025 World's 50 Best list, with Central and Kjolle also in the global top ten, means Lima has more legitimate claim to being a world food capital right now than almost any city outside Europe or Japan, and that quality cascades down into a huge, genuinely cheap ceviche and anticucho scene that has nothing to do with the tasting menus. Miraflores and Barranco are walkable, ocean-adjacent, dense with cafes and street art, and rated among the safest areas in Latin America to be a pedestrian, day or night on the main streets. The new Jorge Chavez terminal is a real upgrade too: more gates, more capacity, and an easier arrivals experience than the cramped old terminal. Entry logistics are also low-friction for U.S. travelers: no visa required for tourist stays up to 90 days, sometimes extendable to 183 at the immigration officer's discretion, and a stable, favorable exchange rate around 3.4 soles to the dollar makes budgeting easy and stretches everyday spending a long way outside the fine-dining bracket.
What nearly ruined the trip
The safety picture is not uniform, and pretending it is would be dishonest. Lima Centro, the historic downtown with the plazas and colonial churches everyone wants to photograph, is described consistently as unsafe after dark, and the State Department's Level 2 advisory for Peru flags widespread crime and a high-threat designation specifically for Lima. Unofficial street taxis are the sharpest edge of that risk: no meter, no company markings, and a documented pattern of express kidnappings where tourists are driven to ATMs and forced to withdraw cash, which is exactly why every credible source says to use the official counter in arrivals or an app, never a tout at the curb. Then there is the price gap at the top of the food scene, which is real friction if you came for the world's-best-restaurant headline: Central and Maido both run well past $300 to $400 per person before wine, reservations at Central are tight enough in high season that casual walk-in hopes are unrealistic, and neither restaurant does a la carte, so there is no cheaper way in. Budget for it as a splurge, not a meal.
Safety
★★★☆☆ MixedValue for money
★★★★☆ Good valueMore from Lima
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