What it's like to eat in one of Peru's best restaurants

There's a common misconception about fine dining. It's the tiny portions you see on large plates - it makes people think you barely get fed at these places, that you will need to go out for a hamburger after your $500 dinner just to make sure you don't go to bed hungry.

I can assure you that is not the case. At least, mostly that is not the case. And at Mil Restaurant in Peru, that is 100 per cent not the case. Because right now I'm up to my seventh course of eight, and I'm hitting the danger zone. I'm absolutely stuffed. I can feel the panic that rises when you know you're still going to be served more food and it will be very impolite and - in fact - a significant waste of money to not eat it, let alone not enjoy it. And I am not sure I can.

Let's talk about Mil. It is another crowning achievement of Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez, whose Lima fine-diner, Central, was this year named world's best restaurant by the 50 Best organisation. Mil sits high in the Andes, about an hour outside Cusco, on the lip of an Incan archaeological site. Here, Martinez and his crew tinker solely with local, native ingredients, devising a menu of eight courses - each of which features multiple, complementary dishes - that are astonishing not just in their creativity, but in their outrageous deliciousness.

The names of the ingredients mean very little to most of us: urubamba, ayrampo, cabuya and the like. The dishes have no names, but are grouped by the altitudes from which their ingredients were sourced, from extremes above 4000 metres to lush Andean cloud forest. Some food is preserved, some baked, some fermented, some fresh. There is nowhere else and nothing else like this: the location, the ingredients, the skill. And of course, it's very expensive. So all I can do now is stare out the window at the high peaks of the Andes, the source of and inspiration for this incredible meal, take a deep breath, and prepare to eat more. milcentro.pe

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