The catch of the day turned out to be a trompe l'oeil.

Until then, Lima's culinary scene had stagnated with lengthy menus, printed ad nauseam, that barely changed and assumed that everything in the pantry, including seafood, was available year-round. Sometimes the requested fish wasn't available that day, or squid couldn't be found, but the menus remained resistant to change: sole, sea bass, octopus, crab, grouper occasionally, corvina more frequently, silverside or shrimp if it wasn't in season. Peruvian cuisine existed without seasons, and the product was always readily available in the local imagination. It wasn't common to find other fish, although some markets offered them: fortuno, mahi-mahi, cachema, charela, buri, parrotfish, or cabrilla. Using them meant changing the menu, the great anathema of the local chef, and learning to work with new species: studying cuts, researching uses, and adjusting cooking times.

Then came Gastón Acurio, as often happens when Peruvian cuisine has had to make decisions, and he emphasized the value of the day's catch: buying the freshest fish at the market, generally the most abundant and therefore the most economical, and making the most of its natural qualities. It was a novel concept in a Latin America whose capitals had turned their backs on seafood. It wasn't easy to implement, but it worked.

The poor condition of the fish arriving, and unfortunately still arriving, at the fishing ports of Villa María del Triunfo and Ventanilla, supplied by boats fishing without ice in their holds, forced a change in distribution channels. Some cooks began stocking their pantries with what local entrepreneurs brought in: maximum freshness and immediate delivery. People learned to understand the sea, and each place cooked with what was available to them.

There were ups and downs, but the practice became institutionalized. Pedro Miguel Schiaffino implemented it at Malabar, as he now does with much more generosity at La Rosa Náutica, and Rafael Osterling did the same at El Mercado, as did many others. Héctor Solís hired his supplier, who provides him with raw materials from all corners of the coast, which stretches for 2,500 kilometers: grouper for Fiesta and other species, starting with cabrilla for La Picantería de Surquillo, where all the catch is fresh that day and, when there's corvina, nobody tries to hide it.

Today, Lima's restaurants almost always offer a fish of the day dish. They applied the experience of Gastón Acurio and the other pioneers, although they ended up giving it the form that Virgilio Martínez later taught them at Central: cachema (Cynoscion analis) year-round. Their approach was different: there was no need to change the species if it was enough to change the name. His assistants joked, "What will the cachema be called today?" It could be disguised as corvina, the most common, as grouper, or as other species. The sea and Mater's imagination seemed almost limitless.

Practice, like familiarity, eventually breeds affection, and the cachema became a staple of Lima's cuisine. It's not an exceptional fish, but it's perfectly acceptable for a tasting menu or the daily special at a local restaurant. It's rather bland, with few distinctive textures, average yield, and often quite tasteless, but it's plentiful and inexpensive. So much so that Lima's restaurants have made its name synonymous with the catch of the day.

At Siete, the restaurant where Ricardo Martins caters to the cravings of Lima's hipster community, the waiter came to explain that they had made a mistake and that the fish of the day was chita, a luxury fish these days. Without that detail, the cachema would have continued its journey to the table. The day the cachema turned out to be chita, the pil pil sauce was a watery and bland sauce that barely complemented one of the six razor clams (al pil pil) advertised on the menu, and the garlic sauce for the fish of the day (al ajillo) ended up as gloops of oil floating in a mushy broth. It remains to be seen how the meunière, the Sichuan escabeche, the chicken parfait, the curry, or the cacio e pepe, which are also listed on the menu, are prepared.

It doesn't matter which restaurant you choose: barring unforeseen circumstances, the star dish will be the catch of the day, even when a storm prevents the boats from going out to sea. For this reason, Lima's gastronomy, both haute cuisine and popular fare, is becoming routine and disrespectful to the sea, to the kitchen, and to the diner. The Peruvian sea has much to say, but few restaurants are able to understand and convey it. Menus are once again static and excessively long: on one visit, more than 140 dishes were counted on the menu at La Mar.