Peruvian food on Gili Meno: anticuchos, pollo a la brasa, and a pisco sour with a Chilean passport

Our menu borrows from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Peru, and the Peruvian dishes are scattered through every section of it. If you have come to Gili Meno looking for Peruvian food, this is where it is, and this is what it costs.

Anticuchos, without the heart

In Peru, anticuchos are grilled skewers, and the traditional ones are beef heart. We should say plainly that ours are not. The beef anticuchos are grass-fed Black Angus rump at 120K, and the chicken anticuchos are 85K. Both go into aji panca, the Peruvian red chilli that gives anticuchos their colour, and come with pickled red onion and coriander.

If you have eaten them from a street cart in Lima, you will notice the difference. If you have not, start with the chicken.

Pollo a la brasa

Peru takes its chicken seriously enough to give it a national day, the third Sunday of July. The dish is usually traced to Lima around 1950. Ours is 170K and arrives with hand cut potato chips, fries, green coriander rice, chimichurri mushrooms, green chilli sauce and salsa criolla, the sharp onion relish that turns up all over Peruvian cooking and on our squid chicharrones too.

Ceviche

Ceviche mixto, 120K: white fish, prawn and octopus in leche de tigre, with plantain chips and sweet potato puree. We have written a whole piece about how it differs from the aguachile on the same menu, so we will not repeat it here. Order both and decide for yourself.

Now, the pisco

Pisco is a grape brandy, and Peru and Chile have argued for a long time about who it belongs to. Peru points to records from 1587 and 1613, which UNESCO added to its regional Memory of the World register in 2024. Chile points to its own denomination of origin, in force since 1931. The argument is not over and we are not going to settle it from a beach in Indonesia.

We should declare an interest, though. The pisco in our pisco sour is Pisco Capel Reservado, which is Chilean, from a growers' cooperative in the Elqui Valley. So the Peruvian end of our menu finishes with a Chilean pisco. Ours is made with pisco, lemon juice and egg white, at 140K. A glass of the Capel on its own is 180K.

The Peruvian end of our menu finishes with a Chilean pisco. We are aware.

Between 16:00 and 18:00, two pisco sours and a scallop ceviche are 300K. That scallop ceviche is not on the main menu; it only appears for happy hour.

All the food above is gluten free, like everything else from the kitchen. Prices are subject to 7% service and 10% government tax.