Not only was Chef Virgilio Martínez’s Restaurant Central in the Peruvian capital Lima last week named the ‘best restaurant in the world’, it is also the first time that a restaurant from South America has made the list of ‘The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ (W50B). ) submits. Moreover, never before have so many restaurants in Lima been listed at the same time as now; in addition to Central also Maido (no. 6), Kjolle (no. 28) and Mayta (no. 47). This means that Lima is better represented this year than Paris, London or Tokyo. It is the seal of Lima’s status as a culinary metropolis.
That status does not come out of the blue. Martínez Véliz and his Central have been a fixture on the W50B for ten years. Peruvian cuisine has been on the rise for at least two decades and Peruvian food is now as natural as Italian or French in most of the world’s cities. You can also enjoy diverse Peruvian food in Amsterdam, for example in the accessible ceviche bar Sjefietshe, or more up-scale fine dining at Nazka.
The success of Peruvian fusion cuisine, an amalgam of geographical and cultural-historical influences, is understandable. To begin with, Peru has a particularly rich pantry: the tropical Amazon full of exotic plants and fruits, many thousands of tuberous plants from the Andes high mountains and access to the most beautiful sea fish through the cold Humboldt current off the coast.
In addition, there are foreign influences. In addition to citrus fruits, the Spanish rulers also brought Moorish-Arabic and, with the African slaves, Creole influences. The Chinese migrant workers at the beginning of the nineteenth century and Japanese at the end also brought their kitchens with them. The Maido restaurant, which ranks sixth, is an example of refined Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei cuisine.
No one has contributed more to the international recognition of Peruvian cuisine than chef and hospitality entrepreneur Gaston Acurio, who received the W50B Lifetime achievement award in 2018 and who was a teacher of Martínez. With his restaurant empire in South America and Europe, he gave Peru international gastronomic allure. He organized gastronomic festivals, founded cooking schools and gave Peruvians reason to be proud, Martínez told in 2016 NRC. Celebrated Spanish chef Ferran Adrià once said: “Chefs are to the youth of Peru what footballers are to Brazil.”
The Peruvian government has been doing everything possible for at least twenty years to put the country on the map as a culinary destination. The restaurant culture is propagated as an important branch of the tourism sector – for example by flying Peruvian chefs to embassies around the world to enthuse the local culinary journal. So that policy has paid off.
Central’s popularity and award is part of a wider reappraisal of hyper-local ingredients in haute cuisine – following the New Nordic Cuisine spearheaded by Danish restaurant Noma. Martínez gave his own interpretation to this in 2010 when he also went ‘strictly local’. But where in Scandinavia this translates into limitations in which the master can assert himself, Martínez was surprised by the offer. Of the 117 microclimates in the world, 84 can be found in Peru, says Martinez. “More than four thousand varieties of potatoes grow in Peru alone.”
He found his organizing principle in the height difference. His dishes are the reflection of the ecosystems at different altitudes in Peru, according to the principle ‘what grows together, goes together’. “The native inhabitants of the Andes understand the world in a vertical way. Everything in Peru changes with altitude: the landscapes, the products, the life,” said Martínez in 2016.
In order to discover and codify all indigenous Peruvian products and to describe the traditional applications and cooking techniques and to safeguard them for the future, Martínez has set up a foundation, Mater Initiative, with his sister Malena and his wife Pía Leon, in which chefs collaborate with biologists and the original inhabitants of the jungle and the high mountains. In addition to being a partner in Mater, Leon is co-chef at Central and is also in the list with her own restaurant Kjolle, in place 28. In 2021, she was elected The World’s Best Female Chef by W50B.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 24, 2023.