When the plate arrived, I wasn’t thrilled about its contents. On it was a deep-fried, puffed-up tortilla with a tiny, bright-red crab resting on top, its pincers jutting off the edge. I’d eaten soft-shell crab numerous times before, so there was no reason to be deterred from eating the entire body of the crustacean, but there was something about its unfamiliar hard shell and sharp red claws that didn’t exactly whet my appetite.
“This is a street food dish from Tarija,” said the waiter at Gustu, a La Paz restaurant founded in 2013 by Claus Meyer, co-founder of Copenhagen’s two-Michelin-star restaurant Noma. “There’s a bisque inside the tortilla, so eat it in one bite.” I popped the crab-topped, swollen tortilla into my mouth and felt it burst, releasing a strong umami broth. It was crunchy and salty, and unlike anything I’d ever tasted before.