Eating blind: the innovative experience of an exclusive restaurant in Miraflores

He introduces himself as Xoma and will be my guide. She has taken me by the hand to the table where three other people —two of them I don’t know— are getting ready to try a unique culinary experience: eating blind. I have a black eye mask like the ones I would wear to sleep on a plane during a long flight. I imagine him dark, tall and thin, with a reverent voice learned from a thousand wars in elegant restaurants. He knows everything and he literally sees what I can’t.

Xoma, the maitre d’, has delicate manners and fine manners. She calls the women at the table ‘madame’, and the men ‘sir’. The name she uses, I calculate, is an impersonal way in which the waiters present themselves as part of the place where we meet. Xoma is the name of the restaurant located one block from Pardo Avenue, in downtown Miraflores. Our waiter handles a fine irony and his smile can be heard while we try to get used to the darkness. Once in our chairs, the first thing I do is try to build an image of the place in my head: I touch the edge of the table and follow it with my fingertips until I find the hand of my partner, who is the one who has taken me to enjoy this experience of faith.

We have faith in the chef, who has carefully chosen this five-course dinner based on experiences he himself has had. Xoma tells us that the architect of this strange idea of ​​blind eating is a 28-year-old man with a mother from Cusco and a father from Apurimeño. That at 21 he left Peru to educate himself in the rigors of French cuisine where the kitchens are barracks commanded by a general with a bad character and little patience. We note that he has traveled a lot because of how he was inspired by the chipá —a kind of rolls made with cassava common in southern Brazil— for one of his dishes, or the use of black chili, a ferment made by the boras in the Amazon .

Later he would discover that “the chef” —that supreme entity that Xoma so respectfully speaks to us about— is called Rafael Zuniga, but he prefers to be called Ralph, as he must have been called during the six years he spent in Europe. That in that part of the world they called him “Toro”, because of that indomitable bravery at the helm of the kitchen. That he studied at the Institut Paul Bocuse, a graduate school housed in a castle in Lyon that was run by the father of the nouvele cousine. That same trend that has made it possible for him to sit down now, with a mask over his eyes, thinking about what they are going to put on my table.

From the first dish one discovers that in reality he is ignorant. That never in his life will he be able to distinguish what the little tacos that he eats with his hand are made of. Or that that slice of bread will contain something called cushuro, but that connoisseurs know as Andean caviar and that it is a flavor that explodes in your mouth. That the search for umami while blindfolded exacerbates the rest of the senses and diminishes table manners.

Most of the dishes in “Love is blind”, as this staging is called, are eaten by hand. Not only for practicality in the absence of sight, but because this show must be enjoyed with smell, taste, hearing and touch. As I dip four fingers into a deep plate to sip from them the juice of one of the saucers, I have stopped feeling ashamed and have discovered that in their first meals, the atavistic impulse of children to take everything to their mouths using their upper limbs makes that you enjoy what you eat more.

In the background I hear the voice of a girl at another table who must be dying of laughter seeing how four people in their thirties eat with less manners than they have been taught at home. I also hear the cooks hustle and bustle. I hear the kitchen implements colliding against each other. I don’t even feel the breath of Xoma, the maitre d’, but over time I learn that he is there because every time someone says, very sure of himself, that a dish has a certain ingredient, his voice from beyond the grave appears to correct the man or the madame.

Every time the table finishes a plate, Xoma confirms or denies our suspicions. Eating bandaged is a game but also an act of faith. I, who have not eaten fruit since I was a child, would gobble up any soursop sweet that occurred to me to put on my plate without thinking twice, although this did not happen.

During this journey of flavors I discover that I don’t know how to cook either. That my vast experience based on YouTube videos does not allow me to recognize flavors efficiently and, therefore, my tongue is spoiled. I also discover that Eric Canino, the two-Michelin-starred chef at La Voile restaurant, located in an area of ​​the Côte d’Azur, fueled the education of chef Zúñiga’s palate, but also his martial frenzy when cooking.

I have preferred not to say what exactly was eaten at this dinner because although the dishes are different each time, there are experiences that would not make sense to describe. I’ll just say that at the end you smell roses in the air. And that when I took off my blindfold, an hour and a half after starting, I discovered something that I already sensed: that Xoma, the maitre d’, was Ralph Zúñiga, the chef, who has listened to each of the things we have said and has taken it as a quiz for your menu. And it is that as he said in “The Little Prince”: what is essential is invisible to the eyes.

WHERE:

xoma

Address: Elias Aguirre 179, Miraflores

Phone / Whatapp: +51970653913

Reservations: [email protected]

• “Love is blind” is part of the Xoma experience for its “Summer Loves 2022” campaign and includes two possibilities.
• There is a short experience, in five times, and a long one, in 10. The first costs 250 soles (does not include drinks) and the second, 390 (includes a welcome drink).
• The “Partners in blind” promotion, which is detailed in this review, is a 5-step tasting menu for a couple and has a value of S/450.
• The “Love is blind” experience will continue throughout February and will become “on demand” after that.

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