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.

Bar Harbor Seafood, one of the companies that provides fresh fish, shellfish and other goodies from the sea to area restaurants, has been serving lunch from its South Orlando warehouse space for about a year now. I only learned of it recently, and stopped in thinking it would be an obscure, sparsely attended out-of-the-way lunch spot to try out.

Well, it certainly is out of the way. But sparsely attended, no.

In fact, I haven’t seen lines this long for a counter restaurant that didn’t specialize in barbecue and have the name Rivers attached to it for quite some time.

Bar Harbor’s wholesale facility is on Premier Row, just west of South Orange Blossom Trail, in Orlando’s Central Park. Its neighbors are other warehouses and showrooms, and I’m thinking it was a lot of the workers from those other businesses that were cramming into the decidedly too small space where lunch orders are taken. (It’s the same space where the company offers retail seafood orders to those who don’t buy their fish by the tonnage.

The menu features fish and chips, Ipswich clams, sushi rolls, cod sliders and such. Most of the cooking seems to be done somewhere else on the property — one of the workers was shouting orders into a walkie talkie device — although at one point I saw someone slip a live lobster into a large pot of water boiling on a portable hot plate.

The gimmick is cooking your own food at your table on a 700-degree rock. Bring the kids!

Bombay Cafe is one of a handful of Indian businesses that comprise a sort of mini mall. There is a sizable food market up front, a clothing store, jewelry and such. The cafe is at the end of the brightly lit short hallway in the back.
It’s a small space that is made to seem even smaller with the inclusion of high dividers that give the impression of cubicles in a bank. The windows at the front look out only to the hallway — there is no view of the outdoors.
Instead of full service, Bombay Cafe is structured more as a fast-casual restaurant where guests order at the counter then take any available seat and wait for someone to deliver the food. Nowhere on the menu does it say this is a vegetarian restaurant, you just figure it out yourself. No matter, the food is very good, and the people are quite pleasant. 

The latest to jump on the street food bandwagon, wagonless as it is, is Bombay Street Kitchen, a rebranding of sorts from a business that used to be called Bombay Cafe and was located about a half a block away.

Additional location: Florida Mall, 8001 S. Oragne Blossom Trail, Orlando; 407-859-7844. This national chain was recently purchased by Orlando resident (and Planet Hollywood founder) Robert Earl, who is remaking the restaurant into a fun place for the family to dine. The menu has undergone a redo as well, with an eye toward freshness. For example, all sauces are made daily at each location. That’s pretty impressive.Portions are humongous, so have a little and save the rest for your next three meals.

A simple little authentic Mexican eatery. How authentic? You might have to ask if the have a menu in English.

This restaurant is not recommended at this time.

Opened in 1992, Cecil’s is an Orlando Classic. The ribs are worth having.

From local restaurant group Talk of the Town, Charley’s is a longtime steakhouse that specializes in fine cuts of meat cooked over hardwood fires. Very popular with the tourists, most locals know that it can be hit or miss. When it’s on the mark, it’s very good. Besides this location, there is a Charley’s on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando and another in Kissimmee.