Hello Chocolate, Meet Beer

This morning started well meaningly enough with an avocado shake and a session of yoga on the lawn. Thus ended the healthy and virtuous activities of the day.

We proceeded to have lunch at Prasada vegetarian café, which serves one of the best lentil burger sandwiches I have ever tasted, loaded with chimchurri (a parsley and oregano pesto of Argentine origin), cheese, spicy cream, guacamole, and caramelised onions. Unusually it came with thin strips of fried pastry instead of chips.

Chimichurri lentil burger

After this indulgence and a veritable vat of lassi, which must have measured at least a pint, we rolled fatly along to the municipal theatre hoping to catch another in the programme of free concerts put on in honour of Peru's celebration of independence. Sadly, the time we had been given was a couple of hours earlier than the actual schedule for the Festival of Tunas (apparently a minstrel band playing folk songs and not a celebration of the saltwater fish) and so we found ourselves at a loose end.

With little specific to do or see in Cusco, we found ourselves having a beer in the Irish bar on the main square with the quintessential name Paddy Flaherty's. I would normally avoid such ubiquitous cultural anomalies as Irish pubs - this one having the dubious honour of being the highest Irish-owned bar in the world - but among the cultivated dim environment and dark wood, Paddy's serves great local beer on draught. Interestingly, a notice warned us that, owing to low demand, Guinness refuses to ship kegs of their stout to Peru for the foreseeable future. This I did not mind, as the Cervecería del Valle Sagrado was well represented by its superlatively tropical fruit-flavoured IPA and chocolate coffee liqueur Café Stout. The latter was a perfect aperitif for the evening's "noche de cervezas y chocolate" organised between ChocoMuseo and Nuevo Mundo brewery.

Chocolate

This event was the second outing for beer and chocolate pairings, and was an especially well organised guide through the craft of both organisations. While being a fan of both products in isolation, I was sceptical of combining the two, preferring savoury food to accompany my ale. However, each station paired one of the brewery's offerings with one or more flavoured chocolate. Thus, the Cabo Blanco blonde ale was offered alongside 42% milk chocolate studded with whole coffee beans. The effect was surprising, juxtaposing the lime tartness of the beer with the chalky richness of the coffee. Next was the Panam pale ale and milk chocolate with dried mango, attempting to complement the tropical fruit notes imbued by the hops, but not quite hitting the mark on my palate. Far more successful were the richer beers, such as the Pampa porter paired with 70% dark chocolate with salt from Maras, combining to become a decadent mouthful. Similarly, the "Premium" Belgian triple ale's caramel and banana spice flavours complemented wonderfully the subtle spiciness of the ají (chilli) milk chocolate. Finally, the "Barry White" barley wine - the strongest at 9.5% abv - offered dried fruit notes which were underlined by milk chocolate filled with dried aguaymanto (physalis).

Beer

After sampling a few beers, we were considerately offered a small snack of causita to assuage our hunger.

Causita

K and I filled a basket with a selection of the Nuevo Mundo beers and headed home to continue sampling by the fireside.