Shizen Restaurante Nikkei — Restaurant in Lima Metropolitan Area

My husband and I dined here the night before returning to NYC. We had the causa appetizer which was our favorite on the menu and our favorite version of this dish in Peru. Underneath the potato was a delicious layer of smoked shrimp and on top was a scattering of trout roe, a quail egg, grape tomatoes and crunchy rice crackers. We also ordered the oknomiyaki croquettes, 4 orders of nigiri (8 total), a 10 piece maki and the veal sweetbread which was an eggroll-shaped tonkatsu sweetbread sliced and served in katsu sauce garnished with l baby lettuce. To drink we shared a 300 ml bottle of jinmai daiginjo sake which was good, but expensive. Since it wasn't on the drink menu, the 335 sols price tag wasn't a complete shock.

Overall the food was well executed; the service was good, but perhaps a bit slower than I'm used to. Still I have mixed feelings about this restaurant. The restaurant was heavy on pageantry & formality. Restaurants and bars in this neighborhood (which we've never been to) appear to have security guards, but the street was dead empty. What we chose off the menu was a cross between izakaya cuisine and what I'll call fun sushi. There were Peruvian condiments dolloped on top and sweet sauces underneath that I didn't mind. If you're a sushi purist, you may not like this. If none of this would bother you, you will enjoy this dinner as long as you're prepared to pay for it. It was our most expensive dinner in...

Professional, bilingual, well trained and groomed staff, made this Sunday lunch an exceptional experience compared to other restaurants in this neighborhood (Nikkei or not). As a solo diner, the rule is to be ignored forever after the last order is served, so it was refreshing to be catered all the time at Shizen.

The food presentation on all three dishes was appealing, with the sashimi offering four different cuts of quite fresh seafood and fish combined.

Three of the six Navajas batayaki, were either low on seasoning or missed it altogether, which was a big oversight while the other three were well rounded. And it had nothing to do with me not drinking sake with the first three, as the waiter suggested.

The jewel in the crown was the Udon uchucuta where the real fusion of flavors from Japan and Peru took place.

Black being the overwhelming decor palette, made the surroundings quite somber. Lima being a gray city nine months of the year,I find the choice of a black interior quite questionable. Dinner might be the right time to eat...

As an American visiting Peru, I'd heard a lot about Nikkei cuisine the more I asked around. When I tried Shizen Barea Nikkei, I was more than pleased to find that Japanese-Peruvian fusion could be done so right.

While it's a small place, the restaurant has a welcoming and intimate atmosphere. The prices are a little above average, but the quality of the food exceeds expectations (as does the service). Most importantly, the rice is nearly perfect.

I highly recommend getting a few starters - such as the ceviche nikkei and the scallops - to share and then diving into the nigiri options. All of them I had with my two friends were delicious, and they even offered to add additional nigiri to the order (typically comes with two) for a small fee. My favorites were the Andean trout with burnt miso and the fatty tuna nigiri.

Overall, this restaurant's high rating is well deserved. I expect it to remain this high as more people decide to come and dine...