🇵🇪 Peru
Lima
Lima (population 10.8 million in the city, 11.5 million in the metropolitan area — the capital and largest city of Peru, the largest city on the Pacific coast of South America) is built on a desert strip between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes: the city that Francisco Pizarro founded in 1535 on the feast day of the Epiphany (he named it Ciudad de los Reyes — "City of Kings," but the Inca name "Rímac" (from the river that runs through it) survived as "Lima") quickly became the richest city in the Western Hemisphere — the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, through which all the silver of the Andes (primarily from Potosí (modern Bolivia), the most productive silver mine in human history) passed on its way to Spain. Today Lima is most famous for its food: Lima has been designated "the food capital of the Americas" and consistently has multiple restaurants in the World's 50 Best (Central, Maido and Kjolle have all appeared simultaneously) — the Peruvian cuisine of Lima is built on the unique convergence of Inca/pre-Columbian ingredients (the potato (Peru has 3,000 varieties), the chilli pepper, the corn, the guinea pig), Spanish colonial cooking, Chinese immigration (the chifas — the Chinese-Peruvian restaurants that are unique to Peru), and Japanese immigration (the Nikkei cuisine — the Japanese-Peruvian fusion created by the Japanese immigrants of the early 20th century that produced ceviche with yuzu, tiradito with ponzu and the unique Nikkei cooking of Lima).