Food, drink and travel writer + sommelier | Argentina + Latin America
(Good Beer Hunting) When a farmers’ strike in Peru’s Cusco region stops travel into the Sacred Valley, it’s suddenly impossible to reach Cervecería del Valle Sagrado, perhaps the most influential brewery and taproom in the Andes. Unwilling to be branded a scab or run into a crowd of striking farmers, I stay put in my […]
(Topia) With three establishments ranked in the top 100 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021, Peruvian chefs Pía León and Virgilio Martínez are unquestionably the culinary world’s most talented couple; chefs with vision who relish diverse agricultural experimentation with a long-term view. While Virgilio changed Lima’s culinary game by focusing exclusively on Peruvian ingredients for his […]
(The Essentialist) The World’s Best Female Chef shares some favourite spots in her home city. To read this please check out The Essentialist.
(Fine Dining Lovers) Anointed Latin America’s Best Female Chef three years ago, Pía León now adds the title of world’s best to an impressive CV. Cook, wife, mother and a twin, little stands in the way of the Peruvian chef-patronne of Kjolle restaurant in Lima’s hip Barranco neighbourhood. Today known for an informal approach to fine dining, whose solid […]
(Lugares/La Nación) Ya la habían nombrado la mejor chef femenina de América Latina hace tres años, y ahora suma el título de la mejor chef del mundo, según los premios The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Melliza, cocinera, esposa, madre, peruana, Pía León picó en punta y nadie puede frenar a la dueña de Kjolle, el restaurante […]
(Atlas of the Future) Few chefs have the vision and skill to sow 223 varieties of native potatoes on their Andean restaurant’s high-altitude farmland, replicating the efforts of a neighbouring Inca agricultural research centre with a contemporary model in order to improve tuber genetics while collaborating with two indigenous communities. But Virgilio Martínez is doing […]
(Fine Dining Lovers) Born to potato farmers in Peru’s Cusco region, Manuel Choqque Bravo’s playground was the fertile Andean land where his family cultivated tubers at 3,740 metres above sea level. He’d while away days in the field, terrorising his younger siblings with strange-looking potatoes such as pumaqmaquin (Quechua for puma’s paw) or snacking on potato leaves and […]
(Star Wine List) Peru’s capital city is a recent buzzword on the global dining scene but let it be known Lima has been leading South America’s gastronomic pack for quite some time. And, the past few years have also seen substantial growth in terms of wine consumption in Lima. “Five years ago, limeños would likely […]
(Fine Dining Lovers) A noble plant with millenary nutritional and medicinal values as well as deep ancestral ties, negative press about Erythroxylum coca has long outweighed the positive. Blame disparaging headlines on cocaine alkaloid, the pharmacologically active component found in fresh leaves that is extracted to produce cocaine. But, good news is on the horizon as […]
(The Points Guy) Tucked high into the Andes, in Peru’s Sacred Valley at 7,970 feet above sea level, the mysterious Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is an architecturally breathtaking UNESCO World Heritage Site and absolute South America bucket-list must. Constructed around 1450, this vital religious, political and administrative center was abandoned some 130 years later when the Inca empire […]