Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • A30

30 Wednesd 18 Jul 2012 evening tandard hot right now LIMA 31 Rathbone Place, W1 (020 3002 2640, limalondon.com). Open Mon- Sat 5.30-10.30pm. A meal for two with wine, about £120 including 12.5 per cent service. es au an eek Fay Maschler FIVE THINGS FAY ATE THIS WEEK 1. The slammed door at the end of A House Hattie Morahan was stupendous as Nora at The Young Vic still powerfully reverberates.

Afterwards, rabbit with mustard at the Anchor Hope was the apposite dish. 2. Developer Peter Millican has described the mix of art, music and offices at Kings Place as So was rare beef from his Northumberland farm served at the Rotunda summer party. 3. After seeing Top Hat you must hoof it to somewhere glamorous.

Happily The Delaunay is a few tippy-taps away and lobster roll has joined the menu. 4. Celebrating my birthday at The Wells, my sister estimable pub where else? I loved the salt beef with new potatoes, parsley and peas. 5. The late Queen Mother adored them her bag contained handfuls and so do I.

I was so thrilled by a present of violet creams, pictured, from my friend Dee. Like us on acebook facebook.com/eveningstandard DOWN THE CAKEHOLE fit for a fea The new food festival arriving on the first weekend of August at London Bridge is a great excuse for a huge chow-down. Feast will be a mixture of high-end restaurants Moro, hawksmoor, St John Bread Wine running food stalls alongside street food traders like Pizza Pilgrims, and steamed bun-makers Yum Bun. The Quad, Hospital, SE1. Tickets (£6 adults, children free) are on sale now at wefeast.co.uk.

ictoria tewart mashed potato). Tiraditos might be said to be the result of the Japanese influence on Peruvian raw fish preparation rather than vice versa, as exemplified by Nobu. The fish is cut more thinly than for ceviche, there is no onion in the garnish and the has more of a wallop. Salmon combined with rocoto aji (yellow) pepper, organic radish, celery and samphire was challengingly emphatic and also visually enticing. I have to say here that I am not wild about white fish ceviche.

having something tepid and limp in your mouth can reactivate memories that you would as soon banish for ever. One of the arresting qualities of dishes at Lima is their beauty due to a vivid use of natural colours. When I saw ceviche of artichoke, white onion, Amazon tree tomato (aka cocona) and pink peppercorns, which I think is the translation of molle, I thought I would like a dress in exactly those colours and in the way they were arranged. Pungent micro-herbs play a part of constantly elbowing your taste buds and quizzing your taste memories. Potatoes, one of greatest comforts and a Peruvian staple, run through the savoury courses in a fascinating way that would convert the most ardent carb-avoider.

Suckling pig topped with Amazon cashew comes with potatoes. They would sort out those Zil lanes. cTOPuS with white quinoa, red shiso and botija olives (allegedly the most flavourful olive in the world) is a wholly satisfying assembly and an argument for wider restaurant use of octopus. Lamb shoulder was rendered too long and glazed too commonly but the black quinoa, coriander, white grape and pisco cinnamon accompaniment compensated. A dessert of chanchamayo coffee, coca leaf, chamcaca (raw sugar) and olive oil had the grace to look healthy but taste sweetly seductive.

These last three dishes were ordered at a dinner with Reg, father, a few days later. The kitchen and service had lost first-day nerves, not that those had ever affected the beautiful, rangy Zulay Venezuelan mother, english father never put a foot wrong. Virgilio Martinez has said that one thing he misses in england is the noise of Peruvians enjoying themselves. english customers were doing a good job last Friday. BAR A ER PUrL the buzz: the hampstead branch of Marylebone cocktail bar Purl.

the deal: a Parisian-style drinking den in north London all flickering candlelight, dark velvet sofas and exquisite, innovative cocktails. no sign, so only those in the know will find their way in. good for: locals who want to travel for a decent cocktail. order: the twist on a negroni, counted But Not Out, made with chase marmalade and Aperol served with a juniper oil burner to waft a gin scent around the room. Or the margherita, washed down with blue cheese and whiskey spray, all of which is presented on a cheese board.

By the way: soak it up with kick-ass hot dog or mac cheese at Dach Sons downstairs. 68 Heath Street, NW3. Kate Lough cOMPANION for lunch at the newly opened Peruvian restaurant Lima was my stepdaughter Amy. As we sat down she said: never did do a gap year so this will be Gap years are supposed to be about discovery yourself, a beach, something along those lines. currently in food circles Peruvian is being touted as the new catalan or is it Mexican? But I managed to eat at ceviche in Soho and the dishes at Lima, overseen by Virgilio Martinez, were a revelation to both of us (I never had a gap year either).

Martinez has cooked in many parts of the world at very different establishments the late Santi can Fabes near Barcelona, in New York and The Ritz in London are a few and now has his own restaurant, central, in Lima. he is a keen proselytiser for Peruvian biodiversity and the sometimes unique produce of small growers from the Andes to the Amazon combined with the galvanising effect that immigration, much of it from Asia, has had on the indigenous cooking. It is a heady synthesis perpetrated with flair. An open kitchen where apparently the of Martinez works alongside head chef Robert Ortiz separates a bar with a high table at the front from the rear dining area with its pitched glazed roof and the detail of grey- painted stepped wooden walls that I told Amy authoritatively (I have never been to Peru) were referencing Macchu Picchu. Quick as a flash she admired the Inca-inspired stitching on the banquette scattered with cushions covered with geometric patterns that may well be messages in Inca ideographic language.

We started lunch with pisco sours. Made with the eponymous clear grape brandy, sugar syrup, foaming egg white and bitters, a pisco sour is the perfect pre-meal skirmish with the flirty and sardonic. I started to mourn the gaps in my life when I known about pisco sours. First courses are divided into tiraditos, ceviches and causas (fashioned with London Life Food Drink Feast your eyes: the vivid colours of some of the dishes at Lima match the refreshing tastes Purl dive: the seductive interior On a roll: Yum steamed buns.