Lima is a one Michelin star Peruvian restaurant in London’s Fitzrovia. It has a sister restaurant, Lima Floral, in Covent Garden too.  Mr A and I have only eaten at Lima once, when we found it to be enjoyable and very different to our usual dining experiences, which motivated me to order one of their make-away boxes for delivery on 23rd April 2021, for £85 for two people, plus £9.50 delivery.  The box arrived on schedule, with each course packed into separate, clearly labelled boxes.  I also ordered an optional extra Pisco Sour cocktail for £14, which turned out to be very refreshing and delicious, and a perfect accompaniment to the Peruvian snacks which began the meal.

The plantain crisps were unremarkable, but their avocado mousse dip was sharp and fresh. The roasted corn kernels were dry but made a moreish cocktail accompaniment. 6/10

There was a small loaf of Peruvian bread, which only needed 5 minutes in the oven, and a very small pat of butter. The bread was very like a brioche, and it really needed a spread of butter on top for moisture, so we resorted to our own when the tiny pat ran out. 6/10

The starter to this Lima meal was one of their signature dishes; scallop ceviche. We had half a dozen scallops, each of which we cut into eight pieces and mixed with “puka tiger’s milk” before plating, with “tobiko caviar” (flying fish roe) on top.  Then I dotted yellow chilli pepper sauce around the plate, and added Jerusalem artichoke “crisps”, crunchy onion powder and “coriander cress”.  It turned out to be a pretty plate of food, though I wasn’t sure about the flavours; maybe I felt there was too much chilli and not enough citrus juice. I’m not a huge fan of coriander, and this “cress” was very potent, so Mr A had most of my share.  The artichoke crisps were good and added much needed texture, but actually the tobiko had quite a popping crunch too.  7/10

The main course was “Milk Fed Lamb ‘Seco de Cordero'” and was a key driver for me ordering this make-away, because I love the light tenderness of young spring lamb.  But a subsequent check on google translate left me confused, because “cordero” is Spanish for mutton, and ‘seco de Cordero’ means ‘dry lamb’.  Anyway, we received one longish foreleg of lamb, instead of two smaller ones shown in the photographs of the dish; so we carved the meat from the leg before plating, and as a consequence my plated dish photos don’t look as good as if a joint of meat were in the centre of the plate.

The lamb went into the oven for just 15 minutes and I warmed a sweet potato and pumpkin puree and also some Brussels sprouts in their plastic bags, in a pan of simmering water.  The puree and sprouts went onto the plate first, then a cold quinoa-broccoli mixture went on top, before the lamb meat topped it out. Small mixed leaves, ‘Botija’ (black Peruvian) olive crisps (which were actually purple), and a lamb demi-glace sauce rounded things off.

There was ample soft and tender lamb for Mr A and me, we liked the lamb sauce flavour (though we both found it over-salted), the olive crisps were nice until they began sodden by the sauce, the quinoa was hardly noticeable, and while the sprouts were tasty, they made the dish appear more wintery than springy. 6.5/10

Dessert was called “Grilled Pina Colada” but it didn’t require heating, and it didn’t contain any rum. Black markings on some pineapple sticks suggested it had been pre-grilled, but there really wasn’t the sweetness of grilled pineapple (it was even described as ‘slow cooked’ in the accompanying literature), most likely because this pineapple was nowhere near perfect ripeness, which was a shame.  I arranged the pineapple on some dollops of coconut cream, added some broken lemon verbena tuile and pieces of candied orange peel and finally added baby basil and some pistachio powder.

Notwithstanding my complaint about the ripeness of the pineapple, this was a refreshing and not over-sweet dessert, which looked very attractive on the plate. The baby basil was a clever touch. 8/10

Overall I’m only scoring this make-away from Lima 6.5/10.  The dishes created were heartily rustic rather than fine dining, not all ingredients were in their best quality, and the prep instructions left a couple of questions for me to resolve with my own intuition.