Astrid y Gastón — Restaurant in Lima Metropolitan Area

I give it 4 stars, because it was a nice experience. That being said, I have to agree with some of the reviews.

Food We had the 16 course tasting menu, it was way tooooo much food. By the end, I had to ask that they just bring out one dish for me / husband (although, happy to pay for the 2 people price) so that we wouldn’t waste the food. I am the type that if I do not finish the food on my plate, I feel it is an insult to the chef - I should have left the food, because I was painfully stuffed! I think for the same price, they should reduce their portions. Typically, in high end restaurants and with this many courses, making something 1-2 bite sizes is fine. For example, the rabbit / short rib dishes had two fairly good-sized morsels, this could have been just one. The ceviche and scallops, although delicious, had c. 5 chunks of food, this could have been 2-3. The bread basket, although delicious / as well as the dips, could be half the size, I.e. one bread loaf per flavour between 2 people. For other dishes, you cannot avoid this, I.e. tacos, etc, which is understandable. I also agree with the other reviews, the dumpling was underwhelming. It seems like this is the consensus - I would look to consider something different. Some of the dishes were great in terms of taste / texture, while some was a miss (too many flavours). In some ways, giving 4 stars just for the food makes more sense, but I did like the setting of the restaurant as it felt more local / down to earth albeit prices being equivalent to high-end service.

Wine We also had one of the wine pairings while I ordered glasses along the way. The sommelier must do a better job in explaining each of the wine he is pouring (region, make, taste / flavours and why it is being paired with the dish / what flavours the alcohol will bring out in the dish). Or at least something more than pouring and walking away. Since there was only one, he was off with his timings and kept missing the pours with each dish. I also had miscommunications with the sommelier as I was looking for wines that would fit each 2-3 dishes, which may have been unconscionable. The pairings did bring out the flavours of dishes and you could tell they were well thought out - 5 stars.

Service Servers were attentive, but not as professional as would be expected. I think this contributed for the local / down-to-earth feel. I thought perhaps, Astrid y Gastón were going for this feel. If they wanted it to be more formal, service will need to be altered / professionalised. This excludes the bartender, who was very professional.

Overall, it is listed as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world (I think 33) and for that reason, it was a must try in my book. I am not an expert in Peruvian food, so trying all these dishes was an experience. I am surprised how they managed to lock down 33 and would say reduce portion-sizes (which is more acceptable for high-end 16 course tasting menus), professionalise the sommelier / staff ever so slightly to optically change...

I normally do not like writing negative reviews. I feel like they aren’t good for business, however Astrid y Gaston should have an honest review that provides constructive criticism.

The service was really the worst part of the experience. Everything felt sloppy and very unorganized. The host was very flustered and there seemed to be a bit of confusion with our table. When we walked from the host with the wait staff- even the wait staff seemed confused. They asked me a question which I repeatedly asked to reexplain and there was a bit of a language issue. No one knew what was going on. Regardless we get to our table and we are in one of the back rooms. The back room’s atmosphere was extremely average. For a restaurant with such prestige as AyG they could have done more with the decor and the feel. Everything felt cold. There were a lot of staff hanging around and we seemed to have the C team. When we asked for the sommelier too review wine options - her expertise was not shown as she merely showed us the menu and listed off the different wine sections “here are the wines by the glass and these pages are the wines by the bottle”. There wasn’t any advice or direction about which wines she recommended for the food. The wine list was overwhelming as it has a few hundred options. The sommelier in my mind failed as she didn’t provide any meaningful guidance. Over the evening we were met with many different wait staff and they all seemed busy and stressed.

The food was very hit or miss. Either we really liked the food or the food didn’t inspire us. They give you a welcome drink which was tasty, however the small glass is filled with a large ice cube which made it very difficult to drink. The large crustacean is meant to be a show piece but it was a bit dry in some areas and hard to eat. The wait staff forgot to provide a cracker for us which resulted in us breaking the crabs shell with our hands. The wait staff soon realized they forgot to give us one but by the time we were nearly done with our meal. The bread basket looks beautiful and delicious but the bread options fall flat.

I really enjoyed the sea urchin dish. It was excellent. The combination of flavors and textures made it fun to eat.

The desert menu was all excellent. I would give 5 stars for the desert portion. It felt that two different teams had work on the savory and sweet menus. The sweet menu really saved the show.

Overall, I left feeling full- you will not go hungry. But I left disappointed and not really happy. I think I went into the restaurant with really high expectations. Maybe if I went in with a more average mindset I would leave feeling different. Because of the name brand and the price point - my expectations were high as many people before us have raved about this place. Maybe we just had...

We went to Astrid y Gaston on the last night of our trip to Lima to celebrate our time off. We're also foodies and travel a lot so we were very excited to try this restaurant. We did the a la carte and the food was amazing (although one of our fish dishes was too peppery). The atmosphere was lovely but the service was really bad and ultimately, ruined the experience.

The times in this review are based on time stamps from our photos. Our reservation was at 19:30, we arrived around 19:15 and were seated around 19:40. Five people talked to us from the front of the house to the dining room. We gave our server our cocktail order and asked for the bread basket. We got our drinks at 20:00 and we gave our food order. We received our appetizers around 20:20 but no bread basket. We then waited....and waited. The tables around us received their food and we were just...waiting. We chose to go with the a la carte since we had an early 4:30 wakeup for our flight so we knew we did not have a lot of time. We asked the server several times about our food and he just kept telling us he'd check on things. We never received any updates. At 21:10, more than an hour since the order, we were told that the food runner dropped our food and everything had to be remade... The server then gave us the bread basket "on the house" even though we asked for it (we later learned he was not going to give us the bread basket because he thought it would be too much food for us, but never let us know). From that point, the food would take 10 minutes (so why did it take so long in the first place?). We FINALLY got our dishes at 21:20. The server was very apologetic about this but it just seemed like we were forgotten. We asked for the bill when our food came but we only received it at 21:40. We never got our water refilled (even though we asked several times) yet we were charged for 750 ml of water. Thankfully as we know Spanish, we were able to dispute this and the server took it off the bill, but only after we pointed it out! They also gave us free desserts but we did not take as we knew we wouldn't eat them before the morning flight.

It seems that the majority of people have an amazing experience at Astrid y Gaston - we were just unlucky that one night and it was really unfortunate since we were really really excited. Again, the food was very good. Based on our experience, I wouldn't recommend it or go back because there are other world acclaimed restaurants in Lima.

Astrid y Gaston reached out asking about our experience and I noted everything down, however I received...