Cuy, otherwise known as your childhood pet.
photo: Merri Howard
In Lima, Peru, local foodies ecstatically describe the wonders of the Nouvelle Andean cuisine of local culinary powerhouse Gastón Acurio (who recently opened a restaurant in San Francisco), the Italian cooking of Ugo and Sandra Plevasani, and the wonders of the Central Market, where on any given day a sizable portion of the estimated 3,000 species of local fish can be found for sale.
By contrast, in Cusco – an hour away by plane, and 12,000 feet higher – what the local eaters speak of, with near-religious fervor, is cuy (pronounced "coo-wee"), otherwise known as the guinea pig. Peruvians eat an estimated 65 million of the rodents a year, and it's a good guess that the majority is eaten in the countryside outside of Lima.
Should anyone have doubts about the obsession Peruvians have for guinea pig, spend a moment studying the mural depicting the Last Supper in Cusco's Plaza de Armas – look carefully, and you'll discover that Jesus and his disciples are dining on platters of guinea pig. (I've checked through my New Testament, and feel fairly sure that no mention is made of guinea pig being served as the main course. Or as a side course.)
On a recent trip to Peru, I had eaten my fill of ceviche in Lima – it was clearly time to give guinea pig a try in Cusco. At a small, second-story cafe called A Mi Manera, hidden in the back of a shopping complex, while my wife and 10-year-old daughter chewed on alpaca steak and pasta, I went for the cuy. Which arrived in a state of…"cuy-ness" that left us all a bit breathless. And not just because we were two miles up.
Unfortunately, my Spanish isn't quite good enough for me to have noticed that the guinea pig was served "qua" – roasted, and served whole, with the head on one end , the tail bud on the other and, in between, the four legs sticking up in the air. It looked like a cartoon rodent that's been bopped on the head – all that was missing were Xs for eyes. There was no denying the guinea pig-ness of the guinea pig, no mistaking it for, say, chicken or even rabbit.
I looked at it for a while, unsure how to dive in. And my server, noticing my confusion, offered to take it to the kitchen to prepare it further. Which sounded like a great idea, until it came back dismembered – the head and feet were separated from the corpus, which itself had been cut into six parts. This did not make it look any better. Nor did it help when my waiter pointed out that the best part was the head – the brains, he told me, were particularly succulent. Oh.
So, how was it? Well, I'm not going to say it tasted like chicken. Nor am I going to say it was a cross between gerbil and hamster, with a hint of ferret. Instead, it was a boney thing, with a crispy skin that was decently porkish, and a smattering of meat within that was notable for its greasiness. I passed on the head, though I did annoy my wife by pretending that the head was speaking ("Eat me! Eat me!"). It gave me bragging rights as well – probably for the rest of my life. But unlike much of what I experienced in Peru, I don't dream of my next cuy. As the old pun goes, "One egg is an oeuf."
– Merrill Shindler, Zagat Editor, LA