![]() Still, many people are skeptical when they first hear about what Martinez is doing. “Virgilio said, ‘Let’s take Peruvian ingredients and Peruvian products, and let’s cook with them alone, without imported products because we don’t need them,’” says Malena, who divides her time between Lima, field work and Mater’s headquarters attached to Martinez’s restaurant MIL in Peru’s Sacred Valley between Cusco and Machu Picchu. The scientist and former doctor helps the husband-and-wife chefs find new ways to bring ancient flavors and cultural practices to their modern cuisine. There are also gardens, a bar, a cacao lab where artisan chocolate bars are made along with the chocolate needed for the restaurants, plus offices for Mater Iniciativa, the research arm of the operation run by Martinez’s sister Malena Martinez. 28 on this year’s World’s 50 Best list - run by Martinez’s wife, Pía Léon, who in 2021 was named the World’s Best Female Chef. It not only houses Central but Kjolle, a significant restaurant in its own right - No. Martinez’s team is in full swing when he arrives at Central inside a complex named Casa Tupac, a former factory turned nonprofit arts center and now a gastronomy hub. Skateboarding, you need a team, you need people.” And then you have to work as a community. “We dream about amazing tricks as we dream about amazing plates. “Skateboarding and cooking, they might sound like different worlds - these rebel guys and these fine-dining chefs - but we work hard on achieving our goals,” Martinez says. ![]() Maybe it goes back to his days as a semi-pro skateboarder, which ended on a half pipe in California after a 360 spin for potential sponsors went awry, shattering his shoulder and seemingly his prospects until he discovered the world of fine dining. The beautiful people of Peru.”Īnd there’s always a new wrinkle to unfold. “So imagine, all these points, all these wrinkles, that’s the geography of Peru. “When you wrinkle paper, you see all these different points,” Martinez says, gesturing with his hands across the peaks and creases of an imaginary crumpled paper. But where Cortés saw difficulty, Martinez sees beauty. ![]() “Once I met a guy who told me Peru was like a wrinkled piece of paper,” Martinez says, using an analogy similar to one attributed to the conquistador Hernán Cortés about Mexico. When he reopened Central he stopped using ingredients from Europe and Asia and dedicated himself to what he could find at home in Peru. 1 moment when he stepped away from the original incarnation of Central - where well-meaning diners told him his food tasted “just like New York” or London - and spent a year exploring his own country in search of new ways to present Peruvian cuisine. Martinez, who has cooked luxury meals in restaurants all over the world, seemed to have anticipated his No. ![]() 1 restaurants - Rasmus Kofoed at Copenhagen’s Geranium and Daniel Humm at New York’s Eleven Madison Park - stopped serving red meat, redefining what a luxury meal can be. In 2015, Massimo Bottura, whose Osteria Francescana topped the World’s 50 Best in 20, opened the first of several refettorios, serving meals in underused urban spaces to those facing food insecurity, with locations now in San Francisco and Harlem. In 2020, the year after Mauro Colagreco’s Mirazur on the French Riviera topped the World’s Best list, the three-star Michelin spot became the world’s first restaurant to earn plastic-free certification by a group associated with Italy’s Università dell’Aquila. Those stresses were part of the reason Redzepi announced in January that his restaurant would close in 2024 for year-round service and focus instead on product development in its fermentation lab and occasional pop-ups. Inside a massive circus tent during six meetings between 20 chefs from around the world gathered in Denmark to discuss everything from how Somali chef Ahmed Jama was rebuilding one of his Mogadishu restaurants after militants bombed it to addiction issues, burnout and other workplace stresses of restaurant life. 1 ranking in 2010 (the first of five times the restaurant topped the list before repeat wins were discontinued), its chef René Redzepi founded the MAD Symposium (and later MAD Academy). The year after Noma in Copenhagen earned its World’s 50 Best No.
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