Cusco eats at 3,399m, where potatoes come in 300 varieties and lunch means chicharrón with mote or cuy from a clay oven. Three days of San Pedro market stalls, San Blas picanterías, fermented chicha and pisco in colonial courtyards.
Cusco's 1925 covered market under an iron frame. The juice row blends 12-fruit combos for S/6-8, caldo de gallina stalls open from 06:00, and vendors sell 300+ potato varieties plus freeze-dried chuño by the kilo.
A 1970s picantería on Calle Garcilaso serving the Andean lunch canon: chicharrón de chancho with mote and mint salsa, adobo cusqueño on Sunday mornings, and jarras of frutillada, the strawberry-fermented chicha.
The residents' market east of the centre, almost tourist-free. Cheese aisles stack Andean queso paria, herbalists sell muña and coca by the handful, and the upstairs comedor plates a three-course menú for around S/10.
Nuns of the Buen Pastor order bake beef and chicken empanadas on Cuesta San Blas, sold through a hatch window from 09:00 until they run out; proceeds fund the attached orphanage next door.
Hands-on class in a colonial house off Hatunrumiyoc: you shop for ají amarillo and limes, then build ceviche, causa limeña and a pisco sour, learning how altitude changes boiling points and dough.
Courtyard kitchen on the San Blas square where cuy al horno arrives whole and glazed from the clay oven, served with huacatay sauce, alongside timpo, tamales and wood-fired lamb.
Bean-to-bar workshop using Peruvian criollo cacao from Quillabamba in the Sacred Valley: roast, peel and grind the beans, then mould your own bars with pink salt, coca leaf or maca.
Gastón Acurio's Cusco dining room on the second floor of a colonial house on Plaza Regocijo. Andean tasting menu of alpaca anticuchos, quinoa risotto and cuy confit, with a chicha morada sour list.
Cusco's working street-food strip: griddled beef-heart anticuchos with potato for S/8, caldo de gallina in enamel bowls, and pan chuta, the sweet aniseed bread from nearby Oropesa, sold by the wheel.
Cusco's chifa tradition, Chinese-Peruvian cooking adapted to the Andes. Lomo saltado fired with kion (ginger), wontons filled with alpaca, and arroz chaufa in a tight upstairs room off Calle Triunfo.
A converted colonial house pouring 60+ piscos by region and grape — quebranta, italia, torontel, mosto verde — with flights of four and tasting notes. Bartenders shake pisco sours in the front room all afternoon.
Glass-walled bar 200 steps above San Blas, looking down the tiled roofscape to the Plaza de Armas. The sour list runs to passionfruit, coca leaf and muña versions, with Andean tapas alongside.