In Peru it is quite common that the restaurants belong to a restaurant group most often controlled from Lima and so is also the case with MAP Café that is a part of the Cusco Restaurants with six restaurants in Cusco. All restaurants’ menus are elaborated by one of Peru’s most famous chefs, Jorge Luis Ossio or Coque Ossio as he is usually called, and MAP Café is one of Cusco’s best restaurants.

Coque Ossio is well-known not only for his gastronomic talents, but also for his business knowledge as a culinary entrepreneur. The chef and restaurateur studied both cooking and business and did his internship for Alain Passard at Arpège in Paris. He runs six restaurants in Cusco, Lima’s well-known La Bonnière and also provides consulting services to various restaurant chains. In addition he also has appeared in numerous publications and presented a gastronomic television show at the South American El Gourmet network. The everyday cooking at MAP Café is handled by Head Chef Manuel Cordova C. and he makes a fine job in realising Coque Ossio’s menu.

Coque Ossio has crafted the menu at MAP Café together with Pastry Chef Rebeca Delgado and they have come up with delicacies such as the appetiser MAP Café farm fresh salad with organic lettuce with seasonable vegetables from the restaurant’s farm in the nearby Sacred Valley that is served with cornflakes, black olive crumble, garlic chips and vinaigrette. There are many dishes to choose from on the menu and all on a reasonable price level compared to the USA, Japan and Europe.

For main we can recommend the quinoa canelones with truffle perfumed that is a ragu with truffle essence, tomato pesto, arugula and goat cheese filled canelones coated with a fonduta of mature Fontina cheese; poised over a bed of organic sautéed vegetables, chard stems and baby fennel sprouts. Among the dessert options you should try the Lucuma kisses in five textures, liquid, creamy, foamy, and powdery together under a chocolate shell served with home-made coffee flavoured chocolate ice cream from Quillabamba.

MAP Café is easily one of the best restaurants in Cusco and a favourite in Peru as well. The location of the restaurant alone makes it worth a visit – first you have to enter the Museo de Arte Precolombino, that you by the way should visit as well, and inside the museum you will enter a smaller glass and steel box where you will have your dinner.

Written by Andy