Quick Review: El Museo de la Papa (Machu Picchu Pueblo, Peru)

After a looong morning at Machu Picchu I cleaned up with a shower and headed out for what I was hoping would be a substantial and tasty meal to refuel. The night before I was strolling along Avenida Pachacutec (the main east/west street on the north side of the river, but not the one that runs right alongside the river) and thought it would be a nice place to eat / drink / people watch. So that's where I pointed myself. I was there around 2pm, which is maybe a tweener kind of time. Late for lunch, early for happy hour. So most places were quiet. I saw that the terraza at El Museo de la Papa was open and planted myself there, anticipating a pleasant lunch al fresco.

Service was not exactly friendly. I think my timing coincided with staff lunch, so I was intruding on their quiet/together time. But soon enough I had a refreshing lemonade in hand. (Side note: Peru knows how to make a good lemonade. Enjoyed many and multiple flavors during this trip).

(Note: deliberately did not crop out the lady wondering why I was getting the low POV on my lemonade shot).

Snapped a couple of shots of their attractive but empty interior while waiting for my food.

Maybe 10 minutes later, my burger arrived. Looked okay, not great. Maybe it's because I know how it tasted, but looking at it again now I can see it's overcooked. But those fries were pretty good with the house salsa.

Looking back at their menu, I see a handful of things that maybe would have turned out better.

Quesadillas. Burritos. Grilled Chicken. All sound better to me right now. But it shouldn't be too much to expect a nice, juicy burger, right? Disappointing. Maybe I just had bad luck or timing. If you want a drink on the terraza where you can people watch, perhaps with some light snacks, I'd say give El Museo de la Papa a try. If you want a good burger after hiking around Machu Picchu for 5 hours, maybe Mary's Burger would be the better choice.