Some restaurants have a menu. We have a history.
The food at Level Twentynine didn’t begin in our kitchen. It began on ships crossing the Pacific — first in 1849, when Chinese immigrants arrived on Peruvian shores, and again in 1899, when Japanese workers landed in Lima looking for a new life on the sugar plantations of the coast.
What followed was not a planned culinary experiment. It was survival, adaptation, and over time, something extraordinary.
On April 3, 1899, 790 Japanese migrants arrived in Peru. They brought with them centuries of culinary precision — a deep reverence for seafood, for raw fish, for the clean discipline of Japanese technique. What they found in Peru was a land of abundance they had never imagined: lime, chili, cassava, corn, and oceans full of fish that the locals had barely touched.
The marriage was inevitable. Chili met soy sauce. Leche de tigre met the delicacy of sashimi. Peruvian ceviches were transformed by Japanese knife work. What began as a way to cook with what was available became one of the world’s most sophisticated fusion cuisines — Nikkei.
For decades it remained Peru’s best-kept secret, even from Peruvians themselves. Then chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa and Mitsuharu Tsumura carried it to the world, and the world finally understood what had been quietly perfected for over a century.
The first Chinese immigrants arrived in Peru in 1849, brought in to work the railroads, the mines, and the coastal plantations. They brought with them ginger, scallions, soy sauce, and the wok — ingredients and techniques that Peru had never seen.
What happened next was not fusion as a trend. It was fusion as a way of life. Chinese cooking traditions absorbed Peruvian ingredients — ají amarillo, potatoes, pineapple — and something entirely new emerged. A cuisine so thoroughly woven into Peruvian daily life that today you can find it on almost every street corner in Lima.
That cuisine is Chifa. The word itself is believed to come from the Cantonese for “cooked rice.” The food it describes is entirely, unapologetically Peruvian.
Lomo Saltado — perhaps Peru’s most beloved dish — is Chifa. A wok, beef, tomatoes, ají amarillo, soy sauce, and French fries. No single culture could have invented it alone.
These are not distant histories. They are the reason Level Twentynine exists.
Every dish we serve is a continuation of a story that began with immigrants who arrived in an unfamiliar country and, through hardship and ingenuity, gave the world something it didn’t know it needed. We honor that story — from our Classic Corvina Ceviche to the intimate courses of the Kaito Room’s omakase — one plate at a time.
Peru is where it all begins. Nikkei and Chifa are where it goes.
Level Twentynine · The Shops at Pembroke Gardens · Pembroke Pines, FL