Chefs Carolina Sánchez and Iñaki Murúa celebrate five years of the Ikaro restaurant cooking in Quito

In November 2018, the proposal to merge Spanish and Ecuadorian gastronomy, which was carried out in the kitchen of the chefs Carolina Sanchez and Inaki Murua, through your restaurant Ikaro, achieved its first international recognition, with a Michelin star.

That experience that its guests have lived since the opening of the restaurant located in La Rioja is the one that they have recreated for approximately two and a half weeks in Quito, the Ecuadorian city that they have chosen to celebrate their five years of work.

“We wanted to be able to move the restaurant for a few weeks for the anniversary of the restaurant and celebrate the five years that we have been open and we wanted to do it in Ecuador because for us the country is very important and in the end it is also a part of our concept and we know that For many people here who have always been supporting us, one of the things they have always wanted is to go there and meet Ikaro. That is why we decided to bring the restaurant,” says Sánchez, who also serves as a jury member for the MasterChef Ecuador program.

Installed in the Ecuadorian capital until tomorrow, Sunday, February 6, in the Floresta sector (Rubio de Arévalo N24J and Pasaje Génova), finding the right place to open the restaurant during this time was also a task they did ahead of time. “We had the previous work, from Spain, of looking for a place that would adapt for a couple of months. This was not an idea that came from one day to the next. Yes, to do this experience we needed a place that would adapt to our needs. The truth is that we were looking for a lot and it was quite close to the Ikaro of Spain”, indicates Murúa.

In Quito, the chefs present a 15-course tasting menu that compiles the most representative dishes of Ikaro from its opening to the present. This letter contains 7 snacks, 4 starters, fish, meat, pre-dessert, dessert and petit fours.

For both, one of the special preparations that they share with their guests in Ecuador is dessert, a creamy dulce de leche with orange, coffee, chocolate and salty cheese. “This dessert arises from when we did not have a restaurant, when we entered a contest and from there we entered a turning point for us, for our gastronomy, to develop ourselves as owners and chefs,” emphasizes Murúa, while the Cuenca chef adds that the appetizers also have their history. She details that snacks They represent the Coast, Sierra and Oriente.

“These have been very hard years, especially the first ones because we started with very few people in the kitchen, it was just Iñaki and me, that time was not a year, but it was a few months that were a lot of work. It is true that our team has been growing, but we have put all our effort into Ikaro, they have also been very nice and rewarding years that have brought us many achievements”, says Sánchez.

Ikaro achieved his first Michelin star after a year and a half of work, with a menu that surprised by its creative way of uniting the kitchens of two very distant countries, in flavor, techniques and ingredients.

Sánchez and Murúa, who met at the Basque Culinary Center (in Spain) and got married in December in Ecuador, do not rule out opening their own establishment in the country. “We would really like to open in Ecuador, an establishment that is a little more informal than Ikaro, but that is also our kitchen,” says Sánchez, who divides his work in the restaurant with the recordings of the TV show Teleamazonas.

“It has been two and a half weeks in which we have had a fairly large number of reservations, waiting lists and we are sorry that it has been a short time, but we must return to our original home,” says Murúa. (I)