Chakana

A Former Bank Vault and a Pisco List: Peruvian Dining in Moseley

The building sets the tone before the food arrives. Chakana occupies a former Lloyd's bank on Alcester Road in Moseley, and the conversion has been handled with restraint: stripped wood floors, thick rustic tables, and enough open space to feel airy rather than cavernous. The old safe has been repurposed as a private dining room, which is either the most on-brand thing a neighbourhood restaurant has ever done or simply a clever use of an immovable fixture. Either way, it works. The room feels settled, not forced — a space that has found its purpose.

Moseley itself sits a few miles south of Birmingham city centre, and its dining scene runs toward independent neighbourhood restaurants rather than the Michelin-dense concentration of Edgbaston and the city core. Our full Birmingham restaurants guide covers the spread from the centre outward, but Moseley's quieter, residential character is part of what gives Chakana its identity. This is not a restaurant positioning itself against Adam's or Opheem in the ££££ bracket. At the ££ price point, it operates in the same register as neighbourhood Italian and modern-bistro formats — but with a culinary reference point that has almost no competition within the city.

The Pan-American Plate: What Peruvian Cuisine Looks Like Here

Peruvian cooking has one of the more complex culinary genealogies in the Americas. It draws on indigenous Andean traditions, Spanish colonial influence, Japanese immigration (which gave rise to Nikkei cuisine), and a long history of Pacific coastal fishing that made raw and lightly cured fish central to the national table. In the UK, Lima in London was among the first restaurants to translate that complexity into a fine-dining frame. Chakana shares lineage with that project through its chef's earlier tenure at Lima, which positions it within a small and serious peer set of British Peruvian restaurants.

Globally, that peer set has expanded. In Washington D.C., Causa has developed a Peruvian tasting format with strong Nikkei undercurrents. In Miami, ITAMAE works explicitly at the intersection of Peruvian and Japanese traditions. Chakana does not market itself in those terms, but the menu's construction , tiraditos with complex tiger's milk preparations, the tuna quinoa nigiri described as a potato-for-rice riff on sushi , signals the same cross-Pacific fluency. The difference is that Chakana delivers it at a neighbourhood price point in a city where Peruvian cooking at this level is otherwise absent.

The Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 places it in a defined tier: not starred, but flagged by Michelin inspectors as a kitchen producing cooking worth noting. Within Birmingham's Michelin-recognised set , which includes starred addresses like Simpsons and 670 Grams , Chakana occupies a distinct lane. It is the only address in that group working in a Latin American register.

The Menu's Architecture

The carta at Chakana runs wide. Ceviches and tiraditos anchor the opening section, and the kitchen's command of tiger's milk , the acidic, chilli-forward curing liquid that is both marinade and sauce in Peruvian raw-fish cookery , appears to be a genuine strength. One tiradito description on record involves a hibiscus and rocoto pepper tiger's milk in a vivid red, set against a contrasting yellow tiger's milk, with slices of scallop as the centrepiece. The colour contrast is intentional: visual presentation is part of the Peruvian cevichería tradition in a way it is not, say, in Japanese sashimi service.

Main plates move into Andean and Amazonian territory. Braised squid with Andean potato stew and anchovies, duck escabeche with plum and beetroot, and a 24-hour confit suckling pig with charapita chillies and Amazonian chocolate represent the ambition of the carte. The suckling pig preparation draws on the Andean technique of long, slow cooking with the kind of aromatics that distinguish high-altitude Peruvian cooking from coastal preparations. Charapita chillies , small, round, fruited heat sources from the Peruvian Amazon , appear here in what is a relatively accurate representation of ingredient provenance.

The Sunday roast format, which combines native Peruvian produce with British lunch tradition, reflects the kind of cultural negotiation that characterises Peruvian cooking more broadly. Peru's culinary history is precisely the story of absorbing external influences without losing its own reference points. A Sunday roast in that frame is less a curiosity than a logical continuation.

For context on how Birmingham's broader seafood and creative cooking scenes compare, Bayonet handles fish-led small plates in a different register, while the progressive format at 670 Grams takes a more tasting-menu-led approach. Nationally, destinations such as The Fat Duck in Bray, The Ledbury in London, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, and Hand and Flowers in Marlow represent the upper tier of UK destination dining, but Chakana's ££ positioning means it competes on entirely different terms: accessibility, neighbourhood character, and a cuisine type with almost no local competition.

Drinks: The Pisco Argument

The drinks program is not an afterthought. Chakana holds what is described as one of the largest ranges of pisco in the UK , a claim that, if accurate, makes it a reference point for the spirit regardless of whether you're eating. Pisco, the grape-based spirit produced in Peru and Chile, remains poorly distributed in the UK outside specialist bars and Peruvian restaurant lists. A serious collection here aligns the drinks program with the food's cultural grounding rather than defaulting to a generic South American wine list.

Wine starts at £24 with a mix of South American and European labels. The cocktail list runs pisco-forward, which is the appropriate frame for a restaurant at this price point and in this culinary tradition. For a broader view of Birmingham's bar scene, our full Birmingham bars guide covers the city's cocktail and wine options in detail.

Planning Your Visit

Chakana is at 140 Alcester Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8HT , roughly four miles south of Birmingham city centre by road, accessible by bus from the city or by car with street parking available in the surrounding streets. The Google review score of 4.8 across 591 reviews indicates consistent satisfaction at volume, which for a neighbourhood restaurant at this price point is meaningful signal. Given the restaurant's recognition and a local catchment that extends well beyond Moseley, booking ahead is advisable for weekend evenings. The private dining room in the former bank vault is a usable option for group dinners where a separate space matters. Wine from £24 and a ££ price bracket overall make this one of the more accessible entry points into serious Peruvian cooking in the English Midlands.

For full Birmingham planning, see also our Birmingham hotels guide, our Birmingham wineries guide, and our Birmingham experiences guide.