Feature Friday: El Jardin Healthy Food And Coffee

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Today’s Feature Friday is highlighting a recent discovery for me, El Jardin Healthy Food & Coffee in Cusco Peru! I had this place on our list of places to check out when making our Peru travel plans because even though it wasn’t all vegan, it seemed to have some great options for both vegans and gluten free folks (aka, my celiac sister-in-law)!

The food was indeed fantastic! We first tried this place late one night after first arriving in Cusco from our Machu Pichu trek. This place was the perfect choice that evening because it was just down the block from our hotel and opened late enough for us that we could go despite our late arrival into Cusco.

Both my sister-in-law and I were drawn to the tacos, while Jon got the gnocchi. The gnocchi was pretty good, but the tacos were amazing! Such good sauce and flavor! They were super messy and impossible to eat cleanly, but they were so delicious I didn’t even care. Jon and I split the brownie and coffee ice cream for dessert, though it was so late at night I got the ice cream all to myself since Jon can’t have caffeine at night. I’m not complaining 🙂

We intended to try other restaurants the next day, but logistics and unexpected closures prevented that, so we more than happily returned to El Jardin the very next day! I got the tacos again 🫣(they were so good!), but this time Jon got a different pasta, the Vegan Andean Pasta, and it was soooo good! The sauce flavors were unique and culturally classic. We got the brownie again too, haha, because this time it was early enough in the day Jon could have some ice cream! Katelyn was jealous and wanted to try some, but it wasn’t marked gf on the menu. We asked though and turns out it was gluten free after all! (It makes me wonder if there are other things on the menu that are gf and just not marked…?). The brownie had zucchini, tofu, and a third ingredient I can’t remember…cashews maybe? It was fantastic.

The location is amazing! Right in the middle of the main plaza, you can literally look out the door at this beautiful cathedral (Templo de la Compañía de Jesús) and around the corner at the Catedral del Cuzco. Pretty much all the servers had at least some knowledge of English to communicate with tourists about the menu, they had filtered water to fill our bottles, and the prices were quite reasonable! All in all I highly recommend checking out El Jardin if you’re every in Cusco!