Nikkei cuisine

Today, Nikkei is one of the most popular culinary destinations, which is a mix of Japanese and Peruvian cuisine. The word "Nikkei" was used to refer to Japanese people living outside of Japan. Over time, "nikkei" began to be used to denote a culinary direction.

It all started at the end of the nineteenth century, when 7,000 people from Japan came to Peru, to work under contract on the cane plantations. After their contracts ended, many of them decided not to return home. In the early twentieth century, some of the Japanese immigrants began to open Japanese restaurants in Peru to make a living. Unfortunately, Japanese food was not of much interest to the locals. At that time, the main ingredient in Peruvian cuisine was meat - pork or chicken. Fish and seafood were considered food for low-income people and poor fishermen.

Fishermen caught fish and octopus, but there was no demand for them among the solvent residents of Peru, so they simply threw out or released back into the ocean what they could not eat themselves.

Most Japanese had to adjust and cook for the Peruvians the food they were used to. But the most resourceful of them have adapted Peruvian cuisine in a Japanese way by replacing meat with fish.

Gradually it was the Peruvian Japanese who accustomed the locals to fish and After a while, Nikkei cuisine was firmly established in the lives of Peruvians of all estates.

Nikkei continues to evolve and change today but this is no forced evolution, it’s a quite deliberate combination of two of the world's most popular cuisines. Another distinctive feature of Peruvian-Japanese nikkei cuisine is the ponzu sauce, which is commonly served with rolls and sushi instead of the traditional soy sauce. Ponzu sauce is a mixture of citrus juice (lemon, lime or orange) with soy sauce, mirin Japanese wine and dashi broth. The next stage in the formation of the nikkei kitchen was in the 1970s , when the offices of companies such as Toyota and Mitsubishi appeared in Peru, and with them came a new wave of migrants, which created a huge demand for Japanese cuisine. But the necessary ingredients and Japanese cooks were not available in Peru, so they had to experiment. 

Third stage of Nikkei development is considered our time, when all combinations of two cuisines are not forced, but deliberate. Today Nikkei is truly a fashionable cuisine. In the lists of the best chefs in the world, you will definitely find the name Mitsuharu Tsumura, known as "Misha," and Gastón Acurio, and in the list of the best restaurants there will be Maido, Astrid & Gastón, Nobu, and other representatives of Nikkei cuisine.