The self-taught cook runs the Leo restaurant in Bogotá, whose creative menus incorporate ingredients from indigenous cuisine
Leonor Espinosa, chef from Leo (Bogotá), has been distinguished with the Award for the Best Female Chef in the World 2022 delivered by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. An achievement for a professional she never trained to be a cook (She studied Economics and Fine Arts and worked as an advertising executive until she was 35 years old).
Espinosa has spent three decades at the forefront of gastronomic innovation in his restaurant, where he has forged a unique, cerebral and deep cuisinewhile searching use gastronomy as a tool for socioeconomic development.
After a self-taught process, opened Leo in 2007. The concept of it, called ‘Cycle-Biome’, is based on finding innovative ways to incorporate little used species in a new type of modern Colombian cuisine. The idea has far exceeded expectations, as Leo has been voted in eight editions of the 50 best restaurants in Latin America to date and it became the first Colombian to enter the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world (it was in 2019). Last year it was 46th.
Promoter of indigenous culinary traditions
In 2008, Espinosa joined forces with his daughter Laura Hernández-Espinosa to create the NGO Funleo. With her, a graduate in Development and Leo’s sommelier, as director of the foundation, he discovered a new paradigm for his gastronomy: the secrets of the indigenous ingredients and the ancestral techniques that inspired Leo’s menus were preserved by the ethnic communities of Colombia, and Funleo was the answer to their desire to support them.
In 2017, Espinosa received the Basque Culinary World Prize for his innovative work with Funleo. Today, the foundation continues identifying, recovering and promoting the culinary traditions of indigenous communities while promoting their well-being and health with programs that promote the use of indigenous ingredients and empower groups towards food sovereignty. In the restaurant, the project manifests itself in the unusual ingredients found on the menu: big ass ants, ‘mojojoy’ worms, skin and tongue of the Amazonian ‘piracurú’ fish and Tayrona cocoa mucilage.
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Leo reopened in June 2021 in a new house in the Chapinero neighborhood with two concepts under one roof: Leo’s dining room, where Espinosa exhibits his creative tasting menusand Laura’s dining room, where her daughter transforms the same Colombian ingredients in more informal preparationsaccompanied by Territory, the line of indigenous spirits and cocktails that he developed.
With a strong sense of social responsibility and a humble attitude, Espinosa has become a world reference admired by aspiring chefs. His gastronomic art has already captivated countless lucky diners and also contributed to the socioeconomic development of the most remote communities in Colombia.