Why Peru is a foodie destination: ceviche, piranha and high-altitude potatoes at two of the top 10 restaurants in the world
- Peru is a treasure trove of unique ingredients and home to two of the top 10 restaurants on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list
- We visit Central and Maido in the capital Lima, to find out what makes Peruvian cuisine so special
Its food punches above its weight and has become a popular fixture in Hong Kong and Macau, on the other side of the world.
You only need to look at the top 10 restaurants in the world, at least according to the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, to gauge why Peru is one of the hottest places to eat. Two of the top 10 are in the capital, Lima, ahead of Paris, New York and Tokyo.
Martínez runs Ichu in Hong Kong’s H Queens Building in Central, and is a familiar face thanks to TV shows Chef’s Table and Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted. In the latter, the fiery Scot calls him “that handsome devil Virgilio” and gets to discover Peru’s extraordinary produce in his company. Martínez is never happier than when surprising diners with his home country’s bounty.
“From the Pacific coast to the Amazon and the Andes, this is one of the world’s most biodiverse places and my obsession is discovering new ingredients that people have never seen before,” he says. “The word organic doesn’t have a meaning here – everything is organic,” Martinez said on Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted.
The philosophy was writ large in a stunning dinner at Central where piranha, Amazonian shrimp and potatoes found at 4,000 metres above sea level were just some of the discoveries.
