For the first time, a Latin American restaurant won first place in the “50 Best” ranking, the 50 best restaurants in the world. The “Central” of Lima is an establishment that rescues ancestral ingredients and foods, which had been lost over the centuries, thanks to a duo passionate about local flavors.
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He “Central” restaurant that works in Lima is run by Virgilio Martínez and Pía León, a couple who set out to explore Peruvian biodiversity and save dozens of flavors and foods from oblivion. On the menu at Central, the restaurant they founded, there are food-based dishes such as chaco, a medicinal clay from the highlands. Or the maca root, known as “Peruvian ginseng”.
In the country of ceviche, Martínez and León propose other seafood, such as rock spiders, orange crab or edible algae, accompanied with “tin tin”, a climbing and flowering plant from the Andes, or sweet potato, a sweet potato from the range.
This knowledge is the product of a long investigation carried out by Virgilio Martínez. The Peruvian chef traveled for a year through his native country, exploring the mountains, Cuzco, the Amazon and the Coast, which allowed him to discover ingredients he had never heard of. That was the starting point for Central, a restaurant that he opened in 2008 in the Miraflores district of the Peruvian capital.
Five years later, the Central restaurant entered the last position of the select list of the 50 best and was climbing until it was located in 2023 at the top. Second place in this 2023 edition was awarded to the Barcelona restaurant Disfrutar.
The “50 Best” list has been voted on since 2002 by 1,080 “independent experts” (chefs, specialized journalists, restaurant owners) who collect their experiences under the auspices of Restaurant magazine, from the William Reed press group.
The jury, spread across 27 world regions, each with 40 members, can vote for 10 restaurants, including at least three outside their region.
The legitimacy of this classification, sponsored by various brands, is regularly questioned, especially by French chefs, who accuse it of complacency and opacity.
For this reason, its detractors, including French, Japanese and American, launched in 2015 “The List”, a classification of 1,000 restaurants around the world.
with AFP
