Tabernas Won’t Die
It’s Saturday night in Lima and I’m at Casa Rebara seated at a table with a handful of young congressional candidates, a trombone player, and a life coach who is telling me he apprenticed with a shaman. One of the baby-faced politicians hands me a small glass, often used in other countries for water or juice; in my country, it’s for sharing a bottle of beer among friends. She serves me a generous pour of the 630 milliliter bottle of Pilsen, a lager that’s been around since the late 1800s and is ubiquitous in the same way that Bud Light or PBR is ubiquitous in the United States.
It is understood that I won’t have to split the bill with them, one of those unspoken Peruvian rules where an invitation to sit at one’s table means that you are their guest for the night and will be treated as such. We chat a bit about their campaign, but the topic dies a quick death once the piano player clanks out “Cuando pase el temblor” by the iconic Argentinian band Soda Stereo, a major hit from the ’80s. The whole room explodes into a sing-along. Now this, I think, is why Lima abuelitos went to tabernas back in the day.
Nights like these are why I’ve been turning to tabernas for nightlife since returning to my hometown after eighteen years in the States. Along with Casa Rebara, I’ve been idling away my hours at Juanito’s, Victoriano, the taberna-coded Mosquita Muerta, the soon-to-reopen Superba, and similar bars with this lived-in appeal. While they share many similarities with the tabernas of yore, the experience is distinctly more modern. Helmed by heirs of the old guard or new owners who want to revamp it for the next generation, this new crop offers no-frills aesthetics and accessible price points. But it also nurtures a community space for an audience that is younger, more diverse, and hungry for a place where they can just chill in a city where chilling has become increasingly difficult.
“I wanted to have a place where I myself would like to hang out,” said Pati Galfré, who opened Casa Rebara in 2022, which soon established itself as a go-to place for Miraflores neighbors. As she explains it, “Lately, there’s a desire [in Lima] to go back to something simpler, more familiar, and less extravagant.”
Tabernas—or taverns, though the English word sounds off—were once a mainstay of the city’s social fabric. With roots in 19th-century Spanish and Italian immigrants, tabernas were originally a place where men (for it was uncouth for women to be seen in one until the ’60s rolled around) drank a glass of wine, grabbed a quick snack, and bought some general goods. They soon morphed into gathering places for neighbors, politicians, intellectuals, and artists, becoming the quintessential third space for much of the twentieth century.
“We Peruvianized them,” explained Cesar Casusol Valle, the current owner of Juanito’s, a family-run taberna in the artsy Barranco neighborhood that’s been around since 1937. “Tabernas added pisco. They created Peru’s version of ham. They started serving criollo dishes.”
Lima’s gastronomic boom of the past twenty years, though, fueled a rise in cosmopolitan fine dining restaurants, sleek cocktail bars with mixologists, vibey cebicherías, and Instagrammable cafés for all your influencer needs. Tabernas relied on nostalgia to hold on for dear life. Much beloved institutions like Antigua Taberna Queirolo, El Bolivariano, and Piselli boasted a steady stream of lifelong regulars and a name recognition that made them practically immune to the whims of the market. But when it came to new iterations, they were rare to nonexistent. More than an endangered species, tabernas were a stagnant one.
In the last decade, though, the taberna experienced a resurgence. It began, at first, as a merely gastronomic reference. Restaurants like La Botica and Isolina adopted the wood-laden, rustic aesthetics of a classic taberna and developed menus that emphasized traditional criollo dishes based on what Anthony Bourdain once called the “nasty bits”—offal and other tough cuts—and mainstays like pan con pejerrey, a type of fried smelt fish sandwich. They were also, unequivocally, restaurants: The meal was the main star of the show.
What makes places like Casa Rebara, Victoriano, and the iconic Juanito’s stand apart is that, as much as they want you to enjoy their food, they truly champion the taberna as a place of social exchange. “Tabernas have two big functions: gastronomy, because it preserves Peru’s culinary tradition, and that of a plaza,” said Eduardo Abusada Franco, a writer, historian, and partner in Victoriano. The taberna opened in La Victoria, one of Lima’s most iconic working-class neighborhoods, in 2024. “A taberna encourages lively discussions and conversation. It’s a place to socialize.”
For Victoriano, that’s meant leaning into the neighborhood’s association with Alianza Lima: one of Peru’s biggest soccer teams, whose roots are in the taberna’s Afro-Peruvian, working-class community. Its roomy, airy space lends itself to large fan gatherings for watching the game on one of their mounted TVs, but Victoriano has also welcomed many of the team’s staff and players for casual lunches as well as official celebrations for soccer legends. Families celebrate birthdays, old high school classmates go there for annual reunions, and their proximity to the financial district means they get a good lunch crowd.
Juanito’s has been around for close to a century, so Casusol has learned how to navigate a changing clientele with the bar’s regulars—some who are pushing eighty or ninety years old. The post-pandemic world forced Juanito’s to finally change its cash-only policy; to keep up with trends, the bar now serves its own batch of artisanal beers. But for Casusol, maintaining the neighborhood feel is paramount. While he isn’t too worried about the effect of Barranco’s rapid gentrification on his business— “We just stay focused on what we’re doing”—he does worry about the risk the community faces. For that reason, their Instagram account often features abuelitas with pisco, construction workers on break, buskers during a set, and local artists and writers. “I understand that if I feature an influencer, I might get a boost in business,” said Casusol. “But it’s important to me to respect people’s space. I like that the bar is a place where friends hang out. I want to respect that.”
Casa Rebara’s approach is rooted in Galfré’s previous background in theater, her husband Francois Peglau’s musical career, and their business partner Lionel Igersheim’s experience producing the Selvámonos music festival. On any given night, you can stumble upon a criollo band, a storytelling class, or a monthly political salon occupying the bar’s small stage. Sometimes, you’re regaled with an impromptu jam session as guests take turns playing the piano. “We’ve always been interested in the city’s cultural movements, and we wanted this to be a space where that would converge,” Galfré said. “I find communal, public spaces really important. I wish the government would invest in them more, but it’s something we can promote as a business.”
Her comment points to something I’ve observed since coming back: Lima lacks places where people can just be. Part of the oxymoron of Lima is that as its population has ballooned to over 11 million people and its borders continue to expand, we feel more cramped than ever before. Different municipalities have cracked down on such quaint activities as senior citizens dancing in parks or teens recording TikTok choreography. Green spaces are concentrated in the upper and middle-class neighborhoods bordering the Pacific Ocean. We’ve been blessed with a coastline, but the lack of adequate public transportation to the southern or northern beaches has resulted in chaos. Whether you have a local library, cultural center, or other neighborhood space will vary wildly depending on your income level and whether your municipal mayor cares to make any improvements.
Even when people are willing and able to consume at restaurants, cafés, and bars, the problem persists. The casual invitation to “get a drink” is rarely casual. It often requires glam and an exceptional tolerance to high decibel levels, as too many bars opt for a proto-club vibe with the DJ in residence to boot. Places are filled to the brim. A conversation is nearly impossible. Yes, we too have an abundance of people doing it for the ’gram. And perhaps this is my experience living in the Miraflores-Barranco–San Isidro neighborhood trifecta, but the city’s cultural scene and nightlife is stubbornly concentrated in that bubble.
But all these nuisances also point to something unchangeable about our culture: We are a people who like to be in the company of others. Perhaps that’s why the tabernas have persisted and why they are finally evolving to remind today’s generation of the possibility they hold. “Social media doesn’t satisfy that obvious need to have a conversation, meet people, or go out to relax,” said Casusol. “That’s why tabernas won’t die.”
Ines Bellina is a writer, translator, and bon vivant. Her work has been published in Saveur, Chicago Magazine, The Takeout, Wine Enthusiast, and more. She writes The Cranky Guide, a newsletter about the freewheeling freelance writing life and is also the creator of the upcoming podcast But You Can’t Stay Here.
