Chicha de Jora...

[Jack Jericho]

MODERATORS NOTE: The first two posts in this thread were excerpted from LatinaLover's February, 2010 field report

...We went back to El Rocoto which I would consider an upscale restaurant, and we drank chichi and I tried some kind of fermented purple corn drink, I can’t remember the name, but it was excellent...

The fermented corn drink is "Chicha de Jora" (pronouced Ho-rah, with the 'hard' Spanish 'J'), not to be confused with "Chicha morada" (Purple Chicha) which is a non alcoholic beverage also made of corn. It is a typical and very ancient alcoholic beverage of the peruvian Andes, it was used in Inca religious ceremonies much like wine in modern Catholic Mass. Its taste acidity and alcohol content varies quite a lot depending of the region; the one you tried at El Rocoto, a restaurant specialized in food from Arequipa, is the Southern Andes variety which is also the one I like the most. It is very strange though to find a foreigner, or even a peruvian from the coast, who likes it.

 

[Jack Jericho]

...I ordered their club sandwich and asked for the corn beer that I had yesterday in El Rocoto but they didn’t know what I was asking for and so they brought me a Cusquena Negra instead...

As I posted in your report of day 4/5, the "corn beer" you liked so much is called "Chicha de Jora", too bad you didn't ask for its name at the forum while you still were in Lima. But you won't find it easily in Lima, it is served almost 0nly in restaurants specialized in typical food from the Andes regions. Very hard to find it anywhere else.

 

[RT Gooch]

RT here. I was in Surquillo Mercado #2 today (just past Av. Angamos by Via Expressa), and I saw this in one of the tiendas. Somehow, I remembered this discussion and shot the photo below. I have a friend that says it is available in many similar mercados throughout the city.