Barra Lima’s John Evans Ravenna hops on a rock to get into an island in the middle of a Koi pond in Parque El Olivar, an almost 90-sq kilometer, 400-year-old olive grove in the middle of San Isidro, one of Lima, Peru’s wealthiest residential districts. There’s a patch of alyssum (Lobularia) growing there. It’s a small white, ornamental flower that smells like honey and has a faint taste of cauliflower.

Evans has created a flavor map of Lima’s Costa Verde, from the Pacific beaches and coastal marshes to the upper cliffside parks along the malecones of San Isidro and Miraflores, giving his seafood centric restaurant an unmistakable Limeño flavor.

Lima is supposed to be dessert. A place where nothing grows. Yet, he finds edible plant life everywhere we go. There’s molle, the bright pink fruit, often sold as pink peppercorns, of the Schinus molle tree from the Andes that lines the streets of the neighborhood surrounding Barra Lima. He uses it to smoke trout. On a beach in Barranco, where others have gathered in their wet-suits to surf, he and Mario Panezo from his kitchen team, find sea lettuce and two other algaes growing amid the crab covered rocks. All of it gets disinfected and then finds its way into different ceviches or sometimes just to serve as a bed for the conchas (scallops). There is cañihua (Chenopodium pallidicaule), a type of goosefoot similar to quinoa, growing on a sidewalk garden beside the ceramic studio making his plates. Along the Miraflores malecón he gathers mint, paico (epazote), and oxalis growing like weeds in unattended flower beds. He collects the kefir like leaves from a red pepper plant that he’ll later use for infusions, add to chocolate in pastries, or in gels.

Evans worked in restaurants around Latin American and Europe before opening Barra Lima, a sort of new wave cevicheria. His first experiment in foraging was at the three Michelin star Lasarte with Lasarte with Martín Bersetegui in Spain’s Basque Country. The restaurant was set in a place with abundant vegetation and different plants could be collected within a short walk from the kitchen. Later he worked in the pastry section and Garde Manger at Boragó in Santiago, Chile and was introduced to a new style of foraging, where the highly seasonal menu is structured to adapt to to what the staff would bring in that day.

“For me the direct connection with the soil and the product is very important,” says Evans. “To personally to collect algae, salicornia, an herb, a vegetable, a fruit growing wild in nature is more valuable in terms of connection and respect for the product than simply going to the market and buying it.”