Latin American cuisine began to be valued when it showed its identity, chefs say

The gastronomy Latin American began to be valued worldwide when it showed the biodiversity of the region and its identity as a result of a mixture of different cultures, several chefs agreed this Monday at a meeting organized by The Latin American’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Brazilian Alex Atala, founder of DOM (São Paulo), which in 2012 was considered the fourth best restaurant in the world, stated that the power of food is that it makes you travel culturally to the place where it comes from, in this case Latin America.

“When you learn about a food you like, you want to know where it comes from, what the region it comes from is like, who produced it, what the culture of the place is like. “That is why we (the chefs) have become disseminators and valorizers of Latin American culture,” stated the chef born in São Paulo 55 years ago.

According to Atala, Latin American gastronomy began to gain its current importance, to the point that twelve restaurants in the region were included among the best 50 in the world this year, when it stopped imitating that of other countries and began to show its roots.

Along the same lines, anthropologist Joselín Degollado, one of the founders of the Guatemalan restaurant Sublime, defended the “gastrohistoric pairing”a movement that seeks to appreciate the products of the region and a gastronomy with roots in different cultures.

“Gastronomy has the power to enhance our identity as a region of syncretism”stated Degollado, who together with his partner Sergio Díaz, promotes gastronomic pairings that highlight the indigenous, European and African roots of the region’s cuisine.

For the Argentine chef, television presenter and educator Dolli Irigoyen, the main teaching in the kitchen that she received from her Basque, Italian and French grandparents is that you have to take advantage of and give value to the products that you have around you and that are produced by your community.

“That’s why when I started, in the midst of French restaurants that were competing to be the best, I offered Patagonian lamb, South Atlantic toothfish, and regional cheeses and wines. “I always wanted to value Argentine products and local producers”said.

According to this 71-year-old presenter who has taught several generations to cook in Argentina, one of her greatest prides is currently seeing a large number of restaurants with signs warning that their products are local and indicating their origin.

For the award-winning Spanish chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, whose Mugaritz restaurant has been among the 50 best in the world for almost twenty years, the great problem of climate change and the loss of biodiversity is that it threatens the existence of products that we have not yet brought to the table, especially in Latin America.

“We are suffering from the loss of so much diversity and so much culture”said Aduriz, a special guest at the awards ceremony for the best Latin American restaurants after having received this year the Icon Award 2023 from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants for his “insatiable curiosity and creativity.”