No, here you will not find tigrillo (which is from Zaruma), but colonche. They won’t serve you a bolón either (although they do have it on the menu), but the ideal would be to try a bola de batea (original Manabí recipe). The sisters Lupe and Diana Gutiérrez Loor, born in Bahía de Caráquez, along with their first cousin José Ávila Loor, decided to rescue, five years ago, the recipes and flavors of their native province through the recipes that today you can also discover in the restaurant La Herencia Manabita (Urdesa).
They currently have a team of 20 people, led by Lupe as the quality manager (“the one with flavors”). A few days after opening a new store in Puembo (Quito), they are also targeting the international market, such as Miami.
“We decided that all this cannot die, and we put up the first store as a tribute to all those people on the farm, to our family. And, with great pride, today I can say that we have once again put some names on the map”, commented Lupe for this newspaper. “And people love to hear the anecdotes behind each recipe (which are extensive), because the manabita lives around a table, he likes to show his affection for others by feeding you.”
What is the concept behind the restaurant?
Rescuing that heritage that was transferred from generation to generation and really making our customers live a truly gastronomic experience. We make culture and history through gastronomy with the aim of rescuing everything that has been lost from the true Manabita gastronomy.
What are some of those recipes?
Everything we serve we learned directly from my grandmother, my mother and my aunts, and they in turn learned it from the hands of the montubios, directly all made in the Manabita wood stove. So, they are all very traditional recipes, and we are superzealous in that sense, because we want to make a clean Manabita gastronomy, even rescuing some processes without contaminating them.
How do you get someone to try a dish whose name doesn’t sound familiar?
It has not been easy. For us it has been a double challenge, because it is easier to put on a barbecue or a place for wings, which are recipes that everyone knows, but in our case we must explain what our dishes are about and, then, encourage them to try them . We need to make them known to the rest of Ecuador and, why not?, to the world.
Tell me about Pásame al Otro Lado, the award-winning recipe at the 2018 Roots fair…
The original is a bed of cocolón —which is soft below, but crunchy on top—, and on top is a green stew that has shredded meat scrambled, and on top a Creole salad. That is the original beef recipe, with which we won the culinary star. But we have four more versions: green stew with cheese and fish, with garlic shrimp, the seafood version (with peanut sauce) and also the pork version.
What other dishes are among the most requested?
There is the viche, which we have with shrimp or shrimp with crab. Also the fried manabita, which has nothing to do with the hornado from Quito; this one is much juicier and is made with an onion sauce with cabbage and the juice of the pork; It’s different, it’s wetter. And, of course, the stuffed chicken cakes from the Manabita Christmas condumio, because we don’t talk about “Christmas stuffing” there.
Source: Eluniverso
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