Chunto, yuyo, squash loche or yacón are not part of the bi-starred pantry Enjoy (Barcelona), but for a couple of days they have been served at their overwhelming ‘living table’. They brought them in twelve suitcases Virgil Martinez and his team from Central (Lima), to show what the Mundo en Alturas menu of the best Latin American restaurant of the decade is like.
This has been recognized The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, in whose world ranking it also occupies fourth place and is seriously aspiring to lead it thanks to a cuisine that covers Peruvian biodiversity to reproduce its ecosystems in dishes with the same ingredients that coexist in them.
Two bi-starred restaurants, Belcanto (Lisbon) and Enjoy (Barcelona) have been their hosts to meet again with European diners who could not travel to Peru due to the pandemic. “If they can’t go, Central comes. 70% of our public is foreign and it is important that what we do is known, because today all countries have something to tell gastronomically”he points out.
This 44-year-old man from Lima acknowledges that the dissemination of Peruvian gastronomy in recent years, with the involvement of its best chefs and Promperú, has meant that “now in Singapore you can find good ceviche restaurants”, but once institutional support has stopped, “we can’t sleep.”
For this reason, when the pandemic has allowed it, he has not hesitated to take Central on a European mini-tour -on March 31 he has another appointment at the three Michelin stars Aponiente (El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz)- to show a cuisine with the that the diner travels through the ocean floor, the Andean mountain range, the Amazon or the mountainous forests of the jungle in one of the twelve ‘megadiverse’ countries on the planet.
From the sea level of the ‘octopus under coral’, with an emulsion of algae and chaco (edible clay) topped by crispy sea lettuceat an altitude of 4,200 meters from which the different types of corn (giant, high-altitude red and piscorunto), amaranth or dehydrated beef heart come from, with which the ‘extreme altitude’ dish is prepared.
Martínez’s cuisine is one hundred percent Peruvian, based on the work of “research and exploration” of the different ecosystems of the country that it develops through Mater Initiative, the project with which it approaches unknown ingredients even for many of its compatriots and pre-Hispanic cooking techniques that enhances and modernizes in Central.
“I feed on Amazonian and Andean cuisines, but the Amazonians laugh at my dishes,” he admits with a laugh who recognizes that in Lima, “a melting pot of cultures very open to culinary miscegenation”, on the other hand these gastronomies are unknown.
Therefore Virgil Martinez and his wife, Pia Leon (Best Chef in the World 2021), embarked on Mater Initiative, an interdisciplinary research center with which they register seeds, products and ancestral culinary knowledge helping the indigenous communities that have preserved this heritage.
On Central’s menu there are clams, razor shells or barnacles -“our sea is very similar to that of Galicia in terms of product”, he points out-, paiche, piranha, tucupí, different types of corn, potatoes, tubers and algae (including freshwater, such as cushuro) and cane or beet sugar has been changed for other native sweeteners such as yacón, because what Martínez and his team are looking for is Peruvian identity and support for local producers, with whom they collaborate in the recovery of seeds.
“The pandemic has brought greater concern about the product,” says who defends with Mater “the design of kitchen concepts with identity”, such as Central, Kjolle and Mayo (in the Casa Tupac complex in Lima), and Mil (Cusco), which will reopen on March 15 after a long closure pandemic.
Martínez is considering what to do, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Olluco, the restaurant that opened at the end of 2021 in Moscow, while he finalizes the opening of Maz in Tokyo in March, as part of his international expansion plan in the that also enter the commercialization of Peruvian coffee and chocolate. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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