Taste of Peru — Restaurant in Rogers Park Township

Chef Carmen Revoredo de Izquierdo is doing amazing things in the kitchen of this amazing neighbourhood restaurant! Having visited Peru in person, this restaurant truly is a great reflection of the homestyle tastes of Peru!

Cecilia served us and made amazing recommendations to go with her friendly and welcoming service throughout the meal!

It is a laid-back and casual atmosphere. The menu is quite extensive and the food came out smelled so amazing that I forgot to take photos of the main course dishes when they all came out!! If you read and see my other restaurant reviews, usually I take some nice photos of the food and I was so taken by the Taste of Peru food this time that I only took photos midway through the meal!

I highly recommend trying the Lomo Saltado dish is a strip of sauteed beef with tomatoes, onions, and garlic on top of handcut french fries and rice to soak up all the sauce! Another dish that was savoury and full of umami was the Soco de Pollo which is a chicken dish with a cilantro-beer sauce that is tender and mouthwatering with every bite. My favourite dish of the night is the Seco de Cordero! It is a dish of tender bites of lamb cooked in red wine, beer, chile ancho, red peppers, pumpkin - and served with white rice and beans!! This dish was an explosion of flavour! I would also be remiss if I didn't talk about their Arroz de Mariscos (seafood rice dish) which is a their Oeruvian version of a seafood paella that was generous with the seafood and slfresh and tender in every bite!

For dessert, make sure you try the Helado de Lúcuma - Lúcuma (fruit that grows in the Peruvian coast) ice-cream. The flan was light and delightful after the lamb dish being a heavier flavour dish.

One of the charms of the restaurant is the live Peruvian music on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursday nights (see clips of the videos posted to this review). It adds to the ambience of the place and was a delightful treat to go have dinner and entertainment while tasting the many flavours of Peru!

I plan to come back and I will update this post with better photos of...

November of 2016 I went to a Peruvian restaurant, "Su Pollo" in Virginia and it was EXCELLENT, not only do they give you generous portions of food for an affordable price, $9-$10, the chicken was so good and plentiful! So after having tried this good cuisine, I thought I'd give the Taste of Peru a try in my hometown of Chicago and what a rude awakening! I ordered the Arroz con Pollo, which was a huge disappointment. They load your plate with mounds of rice and put 4, puny, sparse, sad looking, bland pieces of whatever part was left over from a frozen chicken and then buried each chicken bit under the four outer edges of the mounds of rice they heap on the plate. I was so confused when I got my plate because I didn't see the chicken but I guess they wanted you to play hide and go seek with your food, which, let me tell ya, isn't a good idea for a hungry customer! Now granted the rice was tasty, but for $15, one would expect to have an adequate amount of chicken, as well, hence the name "arroz CON POLLO" however, these four little sorry chicken bits pales in comparison to the succulent, flavorful and juicy half chicken they give you at the Peruvian Restaurant, Su Pollo in VA. I couldn't even finish it, so after I managed to regain some of the saliva that those chicken bits sucked from my mouth after swiftly drinking a bottle of water, I called the restaurant and expressed my disappointment and the cashierwaitress says, "Well no one else has ever complained", she didn't even offer to compensate me with a complimentary dish, coupon, or perhaps offer to re-cook the dish. I'm so happy & fortunate that I've been given many opportunities to taste excellent Peruvian cuisine in VA as well as other varieties of Latin-Caribbean foods in order to give me a good gauge as to what to expect when I go to ethnic restaurants. This restaurant gives otherwise good Peruvian cuisine a bad name. The food is bland, sparse and over priced. I do not recommend...

This place is my new favourite restaurant in the greater Chicago area. I just moved to the Rogers Park neighborhood (to IL, actually) and we have tried every single restaurant around us, including some in Evanston. This one, however, has become our place to bring family and friends. The food is amazing! If you are not a garlic person, i.e., a vampire, this place may not be for you as they do use lots of it. Every dish we've tried is just d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. Also, you'll get lots of food for the price, so make sure you are starving (or you'll have left-overs).

The staff is super nice. We go there quite often so now we are regulars, I guess, and they always remember our names and the drinks we usually order. Don César, the owner always goes out of his way to walk around the restaurant and chit-chat with people to make sure everyone is enjoying not only the food but also the atmosphere in general. Regarding atmosphere, all sorts of people go there; old, young, white, black, brown, yellow, sorta darker brown, all races (which is AWESOME!) and definitely noticeable a good range of social spectrum so it is not an exclusive or run-down place.

You won't regret a visit. Oh, and the coffee is pretty darn good too. Try an Inca Cola, will bring you memories of yesteryore (at least if you are in your late...