It's lunchtime at El Rincón que no Conoces, one of Lima's best criollo restaurants, and the restaurant floor is packed. Diners, eyes glinting with anticipation, sip on chicha morada , a juice made from purple corn, quince, cinnamon and cloves, and watch great steaming plates pass by. There is tacu tacu (refried beans and rice), carapulco con cerdo (dried potato stew with pork) and pickled pigs feet.

The buzz of conversation stills for a moment as an elderly woman dressed in a long purple robe steps into the room from the kitchen. The robe marks Teresa Izquierdo out as a devout Christian (who, like many others in Lima) wears purple for a month each year to venerate the Lord of Miracles, a mural painted by a slave on to the only wall of a church to survive a devastating earthquake in the 17th century.