Grace and Flavour: Coya

This week, off to Coya on Piccadilly for high-end Peruvian cuisine. The Peruvians, in all fairness, have yet to get their teeth into the British belly, and their offerings are still somewhat of a mystery to average non-gastronaut Joes. In fact, ask most Londoners how they imagine Peruvian restaurants and they will evoke a powerful vision of plates of guinea pig flambé served with tiny shot glasses of 70 per cent-proof spirit, eaten while a man in a poncho honks Sting’s ‘Fields of Gold’ through a panpipe.

But I can confirm, after many fine Peruvian meals, that it isn’t like that. Particularly not at Coya, which lies in the vaguely snooty no-man’s land between Green Park and Hyde Park Tube stations, which I can only remember having meaningful interaction with during the training for a 26-mile charity walk — by mile 24 I would have gladly eaten an entire guinea pig whole, with Marmite smeared over its knobbly claws, just to get out of finishing it.

Coya caters for flurries of well-heeled, glistening-skinned, cash-rich, poncho-poor South Americans. The solomillo de res (beef on the grill) with rocoto chilli and star anise is an utterly exquisite spicy beef but costs £32 per pretty, perfectly seasoned plate. Go here, by all means — on someone else’s expense account and go crazy, because weeping into your bill and offering to pawn a shoe isn’t dignified.

Coya is at basement level, sensitively lit (dark) and fittingly hot. In fact, it reminded me of heady nights in Buenos Aires last winter, post-polo, with a tan from a day spent watching men in tight riding trousers, and not the way I’d actually spent my Saturday — watching Keeping up with the Kardashians (Kim is pregnant!) and hiding from my cleaner. Coya is also loud. The South Americans have no respect for po-faced British dining traditions: the sad rattle of the soup spoon and the gentle hubbub of people enquiring about each other’s UPVC extensions. Oh no. Here it’s very buzzy (could everyone stop standing on my feet on the way to the loo, please?), slightly chaotic (expect a cloakroom scrum), and — importantly — from the moment you enter the main dining room, it smells delicious, thanks to hot grills full of tamarind-glazed costillas de chancho (pork ribs) and chuletas de borrego (lamb) with crushed aubergines.

One watermelon Pisco sour in and I’d already done that thing where I place my hands on the table and say purposefully, ‘I bloody love this place.’ I wasn’t even remotely irked at the aggravating American girl videoing herself food-blogging a plate of ceviche in my eyeline. I didn’t even shout, ‘Oi, Lonely Planet, eat your dinner and shut up, you berk.’ My New Year’s resolution to be a kinder, gentler soul is going great guns.

I shall explain my dinner and you, the reader, can decide if it sounds much cop. I ate a plate of calamares fritos con ocopa (squid with quinoa and Peruvian marigold), some skewers from the grill of the finest salmon rolled in aji panca and cumin, and beef frosted in coriander. The shining light of dinner was the arroz nikkei, a hunk of fresh sea bass in a sticky, savoury rice pudding. I want to sneak back alone and eat it again as this time I had to share it. We also ate the fish with Peruvian asparagus in panca chilli and garlic. Do not be ashamed to order the patatas bravas, they are not spuds in sauce by another name; at Coya they are crispy smashed baby potatoes in huancaína sauce and have been added to my ever-growing ‘death-row dinner’ menu.

We shared a chocolate parfait and let the waiters invent cocktails for us that accompanied our mood, which was ‘fruity and exuberant’, apparently. This was an act. My mood was actually ‘woman incapacitated by dinner who needs to go home now and lie with her ankles slightly raised’. ‘This was the nicest food I have tasted with my own mouth, ever,’ I told the waiter eloquently as I left. That’s the best thing about being a writer. My deft command of words.