05/31/2026
Today’s Porch O’Clock sugar kick: alfajores.
George made these cute little sandwich cookies from his native Peru.
Crumbly cookies. Powdered sugar. And, in the middle, manjar blanco: a thick, creamy milk-and-sugar filling made by slowly cooking the ingredients down. It is often mistaken for dulce de leche. They’re close cousins, but Peruvians know the difference. Mexicans too.
Alfajores came to Peru by way of Spain, by way of the Arab world by way of al-Andalus. This makes the cookie itself a microcosm of Peru’s food history: Indigenous Andean ingredients, Spanish influence, and African influence.
Peruvian food, more broadly, is an even more tangled web of international flair. Chinese-Peruvian chifa cuisine, Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei cuisine, coastal food, mountain crops, Amazonian ingredients, and several successive centuries of immigrants to Peru continue to add their own spin to things.
This is why Peru consistently tops any ranking of the world’s great food countries, alongside Italy and China. Condé Nast’s World Travel Awards named Peru the world’s leading culinary destination in 13 of the 14 award years since 2012. Italy spoiled it for them just once, in 2020. Peru remembers.
While I remain partial to Indian food, especially Gujarati food, which is only one of dozens of regional food cultures hiding behind the catch-all phrase “Indian food,” I do tip my Panama hat to Peruvian food. (Side note: Panama hats should really be called Ecuadorian hats. That’s another conversation.)
Peruvian food discipline, and George in particular, are why breakfast and afternoon snacks at the Scarborough are just so epic.
That, and all the passive-aggressive glaring I give my staff.
Thank you, George.
