The world of gastronomy is about far more than just food; space plays a vital role in the overall dining experience. To achieve this, architecture transcends mere functionality to cultivate distinct atmospheres through the meticulous curation of light, acoustics, color, texture, and form, ensuring both intimacy and comfort for diners.

The city of Lima—capital of Peru, a preeminent culinary destination—features a diverse array of restaurants and cafés that reflect the country's rich heritage. Below, we present a selection of 10 restaurants and cafés offering unique dining experiences across the city.

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Over the last decade, prominent and widely recognized architecture in Peru has slowly moved away from single-family housing, showcasing a promising output of educational buildings, restaurants, offices, and collective housing.

This latter category encompasses a series of private buildings characterized by maintaining a scale appropriate to their urban contexts. They serve as prime examples of architecture that allows for multiple families to live together on the same plot while maintaining a low overall density. Furthermore, their low height is complemented by evocative treatments of their facades and interior spaces, suggesting a conscious effort to create high-quality living environments for their inhabitants.

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In the decade since the start of the financial crisis, there has been an explosion in the number of architectural practices that have pursued unusual and ingenious business models—among the most popular of which is the concept of the developer-architect, who serves as their own client. With his architecture firm and development company JSa, Javier Sanchez has been proving this concept since long before the financial crisis hit. In the latest interview of his City of Ideas series—and the third of his interviews with Mexican architects after Enrique Norten, Alberto Kalach and Mauricio Rocha and Gabriela Carrillo—Vladimir Belogolovsky speaks to Sanchez about the benefits of working as one’s own client and how JSa leverages its business model to improve the city.

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