Peru's cuisine is one of the most diverse in the world. But there are still countless ingredients to discover. Top chefs are drawn to the most remote corners of the country, where they learn from indigenous peoples.
A classic of Peruvian cuisine and on the rise around the world is ceviche
The young rabbits were offered at the market this morning. Shot in the mountains yesterday. A delicacy. Jonas Kecskemethy-Vass is in the kitchen, liver is sizzling around him on the spit, freshly caught fish are gutted over the sink. The waves of the Pacific roll against the coast of Peru behind the windows. Jonas Kecskemethy-Vass has no time for the panoramic view, he is concentrating on breading tiny rabbit schnitzel.
Lima is a culinary melting pot like few in the world, and Kecskemethy-Vass, the Berlin chef and singer of the band Feathered Sun, whose father is Peruvian and who spent his youth in the capital Lima, is one of the last culinary returners who in Peru are somehow always discoverers and suppliers at the same time. He has been running the “5p” pop-up restaurant for four years. Sometimes in Lima too.
Peruvian cuisine is one of the most diverse in the world. Old Indian traditions and traditions play a role, influences from the African slaves who brought them to the colony mixed in, and Chinese and later Japanese migrant workers also exported their cuisine to the country.
Gastón Acurio started the gastronomic revolution
For a long time, all of these culinary traditions slumbered side by side, often half-forgotten. Until ten years ago a man started what is now known as Peru's gastronomic revolution. He has just been honored for his life's work in Bilbao as part of the prestigious award ceremony for the “World's 50 Best Restaurants” (Pellegrino list).
Breaking new ground: kitchen pioneer Gastón Acurio in Lima
Gastón Acurio, trained at the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in France, ran a high-class French restaurant in Lima for a long time. There has always been good cuisine in Lima. But those who wanted to eat dearly, who wanted to take their guests out, who wanted haute cuisine, fine dining and tasting menus, went to a restaurant with international cuisine.
Gastón looked at his country: 27 different climates; There are 32 on earth. He saw countless ingredients, fresh all year round. Hundreds of varieties of potatoes grow in Peru alone, and corn is the same. A coast rich in fish, the Amazon jungle, the Andes.
Colorful inner life: Several hundred varieties of potatoes grow in Peru
He saw: white spots on the chefs' ingredient maps, thousands upon thousands of unknown ingredients. He saw a country full of incredible gastronomic opportunities. So he went new ways with his wife Astrid Gutsche, who was of German descent and grew up in France, founded the gourmet restaurant "Astrid y Gastón" and combined what he had learned in France with what he found in Peru.
Chefs are revered like pop stars in Peru
A group of internationally trained top Peruvian chefs like Rafael Osterling quickly gathered around him and followed his example. The cocina novoandina was formed: traditional cuisine with new techniques, new flavors. Restaurants emerged that have become places of pilgrimage for international food tourism.
Until the end of the 1990s, the country suffered from the terrorism of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"). The kitchen gave the country back its self-confidence, the food is the pride of all Peruvians, it unites the country. Chefs are now revered like pop stars in Peru. They are not the guests of strange cooking shows like in this country, they are figures of public life whose word counts.
An old Kecskemethy-Vass skater friend from his youth runs the restaurant that is generally considered the best on the continent: regularly number one on the Pellegrino list for South America, this year number six worldwide.
The "Central" in Lima is a temple of fine cuisine. And Virgilio Martínez Véliz, a lanky man who looks more like an artist, his high priest. A two story city villa in Miraflores, one of the trendy districts in Lima. There is no nameplate announcing the restaurant he designed with his mother - just a large, heavy cedar door. The interior is dominated by simplicity, clear lines and light.
Virgilio Martínez Véliz searches in swamps and on mountains
The star, that is clear, is the food here. “Virgilio has never lost his skate mentality,” says Kecskemethy-Vass, “he still sees something and immediately thinks about how to use it outside of the usual context. A skater looks at a handrail and sees it as a rail. Not something to hold on to, but something to skate on. ”This is how Martínez cooks, says Kecskemethy-Vass, and sips his Pisco Sour, the national drink of Peru, which is available at the reception.
Virgilio Martínez Véliz, head chef at "Central", designs his menus according to altitude
None of the chefs of the new Peruvian cuisine takes the biodiversity of the country as seriously as Martínez. Three times a month he sends expedition teams to the mountains, the jungle and the ocean. It is not uncommon for him to lead it himself.
He talks to tribes in remote corners of the country, lets them show him bark and berries, he searches in swamps and on the mountains. Find herbs that have never ended up in a saucepan in Lima, new potatoes, fruits, leaves, bacteria, clay.
Peru's kitchen is about discovery
He consequently designs his menus according to altitude. His tasting menu ranges from 25 meters below sea level - a soup made from a frogfish, a clumsy bone fish from the armfinch and deep sea algae - up to an altitude of 4,200 meters in the Andes.
It was there that Martínez discovered the Coshuro bacteria, which he causes to form small bubbles filled with chlorophyll that are somewhat reminiscent of caviar. He serves them on a dried foam made from the Tunta potato and a puree of the Isco potato. Everything can be found at this height.
Martínez ’thirst for discovery is almost unlimited in a country in which there are many areas into which few people have penetrated apart from the indigenous peoples living there. And so the culinary guest shouldn't be surprised when the “Dry Andes” course appears to be three stones in front of him.
At 3900 meters above sea level, Martínez has found a very special taste on which he now serves a certain altitude potato. A shock-frozen foam fringed with gray clay. The "stones" melt like ice on your tongue.
Well-known restaurant critic Javiar Masias, also a friend of Kecskemethy-Vass, comments: “It is difficult to explain Peruvian cuisine, the variety is so great. It can be said that it is about discoveries. "
One restaurant is entirely dedicated to the Amazon
Martínez also traveled and discovered before opening the "Central". He cooked in many star restaurants abroad. In New York, Asia, London and Spain. But then he saw what had happened in his home country in recent years. He came back and traveled. For a year. He crossed the country from north to south, from east to west, on foot, by car, donkey or boat.
His expedition kitchen was created. “It's not just about the ingredients,” he says at his desk in front of a huge map. It's about their history and the different cultures they come from. "
The kitchen, the great unifying moment of the new Peru. Food brings the country together. It wasn't long ago that nobody in Lima had the idea of getting ingredients or even traditions from the Amazon rainforest, for example. The peoples who live there are part of the country, but for someone in Lima they were far away.
The cooks are now changing that. "Most of our work is to re-map Peru in terms of ingredients and culture," he says. “It's a modern wonderland.” A few years ago, Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, the famous chef at “Malabar”, opened a restaurant that is entirely dedicated to the Amazon: in “Amaz” you can find big Amazon snails and jungle fish and eat rare cocoa varieties in various forms.
"We're inventing completely new sushi"
Still others refine the Peruvian cuisine with foreign influences. The best known is probably Mitsuharu Tsumura, founder and head chef of "Maido", in which he combines Peruvian with Japanese cuisine. In 2009 he opened his restaurant.
“Nikkei cuisine”, that's the name of the Japanese-Peruvian fusion cuisine, was available in either Peruvian or Japanese restaurants. But nobody specialized in it. The rise of Peru in the gastronomic firmament gave Mitsuharu Tsumura the courage to open his own Nikkei haute cuisine restaurant. Success proved him right. Most of the time the shop is fully booked.
Mitsuharu Tsumura combines Peruvian with Japanese cuisine
Peru has the second largest Japanese population in South America. Japanese immigrants began settling in the country in the late 19th century. Thousands of them came to work on the country's plantations.
After their employment contracts had expired, however, most of them stayed in the country, and quite a few began to work in small restaurants, the bodegas. That was the beginning of the cuisine that Mitsuharu Tsumura operates today at the highest international level.
"We are inventing completely new sushi," he explains, "playing with the taste of classic stews and meat dishes, and we combine them with the sushi concept." Inspirations and flavors.
“There is a story behind every menu, behind every dish,” he says. Nikkei cuisine is more than fusion cuisine. He doesn't like the word himself. Take Japanese flavors and techniques and combine them with local dishes with a Peruvian focus. Many see it as a completely new culinary art form of its own. Even if he doesn't like to hear it: a fusion.
Guinea pig is served in a Japanese robe
Even the Peruvian national dish, ceviche, fish marinated raw in lime juice, was changed by the Japanese. Gastón Acurio once said that the Japanese revolutionized the ceviche. Today, ceviche is no longer marinated for hours, but prepared directly and served almost raw. Something for which almost everyone in Lima is grateful to the Japanese.
Mitsuharo is now one of the most important chefs in Peru, and he is also one of the top international chefs. His restaurant ranks high on the Pellegrino rankings. Mitsuharo writes books and has his own TV show.
In the menu “The Nikkei Experience”, sushi from the earth comes to the table: classic Peruvian steak and egg dishes as nigiris, with Japanese citrus sauce being injected into the yolk. Guinea pigs are served in Japanese clothes, as are Peruvian stews and ribs.
Top quality ceviche
For those who want to eat simple classics such as ceviche and other seafood specialties of the highest quality, more and more top chefs are opening up so-called cevicherias. “El Mercado” by Rafael Osterling is one of them, Gastón Acurio's “La Mar” is another.
Still others bring the classic stews and the simple coastal dishes to the table. Like Héctor Solís, who with the cuisine of his “La Picantería” has also mingled with the top restaurants on the continent. There is no fixed menu, four or five dishes are prepared every day, depending on the ingredients. Sandwiches, preferably hearty with beef tongue and homemade mustard, but above all the typical stews made from beef or fish of the coastal regions, the picantes, from which the restaurant takes its name.
For a long time there was hardly any of these classic restaurants. They died out because people made more money. And, as the critic Javiar Masias explains at lunch on site: "If a Peruvian earns more money, then he does not buy a new car, then he eats more expensive."
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