Peruvian cuisine is rich and varied in styles, with influences from the native Incans and explorers and immigrants from Spain, China, Africa, Italy and Germany.

If the country has a national dish, it would arguably be lomo saltado. It’s a sort of stir-fry entree that offers a taste of the indigenous with a bit of Asian influence. It features strips of meat, usually beef and usually marinated in soy sauce and vinegar, stir fried with onions and tomatoes, with myriad herbs and spices. It is typically served atop fried potatoes with a side of white rice. Double starch — my favorite.

A Taste of Peru’s lomo was both simple and complex, with big, chewable hunks of onions, hot pulpy bits of tomatoes, a sprinkling of fresh parsley for both color and flavor, crispy fried potatoes and a resulting sauce that suited the rice.

The newest full-service restaurant inside Magic Kingdom is themed on the Jungle River Cruise, which is known for its punacious river pilots. You can expect a lot of corn from the waiters here, too. Try the fish collar and shu mai.

This little bakery does some fine food as well, all with a Colombian twist.
The menu is on a board on the wall behind the counter, which holds various Latin American baked goods. I wasn’t getting a lot of information from the Spanish language menu, so the owner approached and asked if she could offer some help. I asked her what the specialty of the house was, but she misunderstood and told me what the special of the day was — a plantain soup and a serving of yellow rice and chicken for $7.
I was intrigued by the plantain soup, so I ordered the special.
I couldn’t believe how much food I got for seven bucks. The soup was a full bowl, not just a measly cup, and it featured a hearty chicken broth with lots of vegetables and slices of green plantains. The soup could easily have been an entree.

La Fogata, Spanish for the wood fire, features a pan Latin American menu, though there are a couple of outlier entrees from Italy. Puerto Rico and Colombia dominate the menu and all of the food is well executed and served in ample portions.

The menu features a tidy number of sandwiches, salads and entrees. You’ve got your Cuban, your ropa viejo, your chicken with chimichurri sauce. When it came my turn to select, I went with the shredded pork with two sides, those being a moro rice (a mix of black beans and rice) and roasted potatoes.

The pleasant young woman who took my order first piled on the moro, then the roasted potatoes, and I thought maybe she had misunderstood me or that I had ordered incorrectly because I didn’t think there would be room for the pork.

But then she plopped on a massive amount of the pork and somehow managed to get the clamshell container closed.

I also ordered a cup of the Baja chicken enchilada soup to go. Actually, it isn’t necessary to order anything to go — if you get something, you must go and make way for another person to enter the cramped space. If you wish, you may eat your food at one of the tables in the gravel area next to the lawn, which isn’t as unpleasant as it sounds.

I carried my lunch home and opened it up and dove right in. Every bit of it was wonderful. The rice blended with the beans had a substantial mouthfeel, the thinly sliced potatoes still had crunch and a buttery flavor. And the pork was juicy and tender and just right when sprinkled with a bit of the mojo sauce that was offered on the side. There was more than one person should eat at one meal, so I enjoyed everything a second time.

The soup was good, too, though I didn’t quite get the enchilada reference. It had a tomatoey sort of broth with an unapologetically spicy bite, with bits of corn, black beans and potatoes in the mix.

By the way, all this food, which lasted two meals, came to $10.10, including tax. What a bargain.

LL is a sort of buffet type of operation, but not exactly. All the food is in front of you in steam trays when you approach the counter, but you’re separated from it by a wall of glass. A staff member does the dishing. You choose the type of rice you’d like (plain white, yellow, congris, etc.) and the meat you want to go with it, and a side dish. The staff member then scoops your choices in startlingly large amounts onto a plate or into a takeout container. Then you pay at the end of the counter and either take a seat at one of the tables in the large and unadorned dining room or take your food to a secluded spot where you can pig out in private.

Here’s the best part. The huge platter of food came to a grand total of $6.39. And there was enough to enjoy over two mealtimes. That makes this a real bargain. Who cares if the place has no atmosphere?

See the website for two other locations.

Don’t pay much attention to the cafe designation. This is mainly a nightclub with elaborate (and good) entertainment. You basically come here for the show and to have drinks. The food might help alleviate the affects of the latter.

Places like Maracaibo Mia, a Venezuelan restaurant in the Gateway District, offer a good value – a box full of food, more than enough to fill you up, maybe enough for two meals, for about half what a kebab would cost.

The lastest from E-Brands group (Timpano, Samba Room) and the newest in Downtown Disney, Paradiso 37 neither thrills nor disappoints. If you’re an aficionado of tequilas, the towering bar with 50 brands might impress you.

For my appetizer I chose the Central American crazy corn because I was in a wild and Central American kind of mood.  This featured fire-roasted corn-on-the-cob coated with melted cheese and drizzled with a slightly peppery hot sauce. I sort of liked it, though my companion found it more than a little crazy. What I didn’t like was the four small, half-ears for that price. At $7.50 I’m guessing there’s a profit of around seven bucks on that one.

For my entree I chose the tres tacos. There were, as the name implies, three of them, but together they barely amounted to one regular sized taco. The mini corn tortillas were firm, but the meats — your choice from among chicken, pork, grilled steak, mahi mahi or, for a vegetarian option, roasted mushrooms — were underseasoned and under proportioned. The tacos were further dwarfed by a large mound of green cilantro rice and a puddle of black beans. Both side dishes were fine, though again nothing stellar.

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The Pass is a ghost kitchen tucked away in an industrial warehouse area in Altamonte Springs whose food is available only for takeout or delivery. The menu, once you find it (more on that in a moment), is supposedly Latin American but tends to hover more around Mexico and the southwest with sections for burritos, tacos, quesadillas and….ramen?