What Is Chifa? Peru's Chinese Fusion, Explained
Some cuisines are imported; others are invented. Chifa — Peru's Chinese-Peruvian cooking — is firmly the second kind. Here is what the word means, where it came from, and the dishes to know before you sit down at a chifa table in Cusco.
What does "chifa" mean?
Chifa is both the cuisine and the restaurant that serves it. The word most likely comes from the Cantonese chi fan — "to eat rice" — which Peruvians heard called out in the Chinese eateries of Lima in the early 1900s and adopted as the name for the whole tradition. Today Peru has thousands of chifas, and the word needs no translation anywhere in the country.
How Cantonese cooking became Peruvian
Between 1849 and 1874, roughly 100,000 Cantonese laborers arrived in Peru. When their contracts ended, many opened food stalls and groceries, cooking their own dishes with what the local market offered: no bok choy, so Andean onions; harder-to-find soy products made in-house; Peruvian ají where chilies were called for. Two pantries merged. The result was neither Chinese nor Peruvian but a third thing — arroz chaufa (wok-fried rice), tipakay (crisp chicken in sweet fruit sauce), chijaukay, wantán soup — dishes that exist only in Peru.
Dishes to know
- Arroz chaufa — wok-fried rice with soy, egg and scallions; at KION try the chaufa aeropuerto or the three-meat sam si.
- Tipakay — fried chicken glazed in fruit sauce; KION serves it with peach, aguaymanto or pineapple-tamarind.
- Chijaukay — chicken in a silky mensí-based sauce, a Cantonese-Peruvian classic.
- Wantán — fried as wantán especial or in the comforting wantán soup.
- Dim sum — siu mai, ja kao and steamed buns; see our guide to dim sum in Cusco.
- Peking duck — the banquet dish, at KION followed by a duck chaufa made from the same bird.
Chifa in Cusco
Cusco's chifa scene ranges from neighborhood woks to gourmet dining. If you want the refined version — house-made dim sum, classic Cantonese technique, Peruvian ingredients — KION Peruvian Chinese is one block from the Plaza de Armas at Calle Triunfo 370, open every day from 12:00 pm to 10:00 pm. For the wider picture, read where to find the best chifa in Cusco.