November 15th the official list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants was revealed and I was able to sit down with 6 of the nominated chefs and one guest celebrity chef.
The day of the event we were able to have an intimate speed-datingish event of “Meet the Chefs” where chefs went table to table to answer questions about their story, their cuisine, their vision and passion. This is what we found out.
MEET THE CHEFS
Alvaro Clavijo Chef (Bogota Colombia) El Chato Restaurant WINNER: 5th Best Restaurant in Latin America
Alvaro sat down to start chatting with us right away about his love for Colombian food. He has traveled the world and worked in some of the top kitchens of Europe including Chef René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagan and Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York City. He returned to Colombia in 2017 to open his restaurant El Chato which pays homage to the endemic biodiversity of Colombia. He and his team scour the country to find the best ingredients including fruits, vegetables and animals you can only find in the region. He also collaborates with local farmers planting his own varieties of vegetables. Between he and some of the chefs in Bogota, they hire a pilot on a daily basis to fly them in the freshest seafood.
Chef Clavijo is dedicated to celebrating Colombian cuisine and is continuously creating new dishes. His restaurant El Chato came in as 5th on the list of Latin America’s 50 best and was named the best restaurant in Colombia.
Pictured above left to right: Brazilian Chef Janina Rueda, Stephanie Carmon editor of MID CityBeat, Colombian Chef Alvaro Clavijo
Alejandro Chamorro and Pia Salazar Chefs and Co-owners of Nuema (Quito, Ecuador) WINNERS: 24th Best Restaurant in Latin America and Pia Salazar Latin America’s Best Pastry Chef Award 2022
Chef Alejandro Chamorro and Pia Salazar are husband and wife culinary powerhouses with the restaurant Nuema, named after their three children Nuria, Emilio and Martin. Alejandro worked in high-profile restaurants in Peru and at Noma in Denmark before returning to Quito. Pia’s pastry creations are uncommon and combine spices, vegetables, herbs and more into her desserts.
With a very humble demeanor they came to the table to tell us about their passion for capturing Ecuadorian cuisine, using all local produce and products and creating dishes with contemporary techniques.
They tour Ecuador learning traditional ways to prepare endemic ingredients and bring these approaches along with their inspired, innovative ideas into the kitchen. Ecuador is a treasure land of unique ingredients and culinary traditions that vary considerably from region to region. Because the country is relatively small the chefs are able to access products from every corner of the land. One of the distinctive foods found in the region which the chef incorporate into their menu is niapia, a cassava and sweet pepper paste that is fermented for 3 months used traditionally in the indigenous cultures. Chef Chamorro compared it to miso and it is used as a spice or to thicken soups or sauces.
Nuema took home the award of the 24th Best Restaurant in Latam and Pia Salazar was named the best pastry chef of 2022.
Pictured above left to right. Chef Alejandro Chamorro, Stephanie Carmon, editor of MID CityBeat, Chef Pia Salazar
David Castro Hussong and Maribel Aldaco Silva, Chefs at Fauna (Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico) WINNERS- 16th Best Restaurant
Chef Castro Hussong: “You enter Fauna and it’s a party, a feast of drinking wine, eating exquisite food, listening to music . You go to a food party.”
David Castro-Hussong and Maribel Aldaco Silva, husband and wife owners and chefs at Fauna in Baja California, came to our press table to tell us about how they prefer the patrons to dine at Fauna: in a family style table feast. The best way to experience Fauna is to order dishes to share, the larger the group the better enjoying long lunches or dinners, tasting and sharing exquisite dishes and drinking wine from Valle of Guadalupe. Fauna is located in the Bruma vineyard and works hand in hand with Lourdes “Lulu” Martinez Ojeda, who Castro considers the best oenologist in Mexico.
Fauna has an a la carte menu, but also serves a 20 course tasting menu. The chefs place great emphasis on sustainable farming and 80% of the produce used in the restaurant comes from Fauna’s own garden. The property is also fully solar powered and hosts a water treatment plant that recycles water from the hotel and restaurant for the winery. David tells us how privileged they are to wake up and say “good morning” to fresh oysters, mussels and the succulent fish from the waters of Baja California. The dishes reflect the food from their grandmother’s kitchen and is a combination of culinary memories and innovative creatives.
Maribel Aldaco Silva, the pastry chef, likes to combine different textures, seasonal fruit and her childhood memories to ensure the perfect ending to a meal.
The Chef’s favorite dish and most representative according to Castro is: Los Callos: a bowl of poached scallops in a hazelnut butter, an eggplant pure and flour tortillas to make a burrito.
Pictured above from left to right: Chef Maribel Aldaco Silva, Stephanie Carmon, and Chef David Castro-Hussong
Janaina Rueda, Chef and Co-owner A Casa do Porco (Sao Paulo, Brazil) WINNER–4th Best Restaurant in Latin America
Chef Janaina Rueda came from humble beginnings and her very popular and famous restaurant in Sao Paulo Brazil is accessible to everyone. She is known as the chef of the people. For US$30 you eat a three course meal at A Casa do Porco that sells over 16,000 meals per month. She works to transform school meals for 2 million Brazilian students by introducing natural ingredients and helped thousands of hospitality workers during the pandemic by encouraging the government to provide financial support. Chef Rueda also works with many indigenous women who harvest cassava root or “yuca” which is a very important and laborious ingredient to harvest in Brazilian cuisine and throughout the Caribbean. There are over 300 different flours made from yuca.
A Casa do Porco is famous in Sao Paolo for it’s innovative and constantly changing menu of mostly pork dishes. In Brazil the history of pork goes back to the colonization. The Portuguese and the Spanish brought pigs to Latin America and they were used as currency. In Brazil, the pigs brought from Europe mixed with the wild boars and that has made for a quite large variety of pork in the region. In the zone close to the restaurant alone there are six different types of pork and Janaina uses each pig for a unique purpose. Some are used for lard, others for sausage and others for steak, etc. With the influx of international culinary influences in Brazil in the last 20 years, many of the traditional dishes–especially the pork dishes– were thought of as popular food lacking in status and sophistication. Chef Janina has made it her mission to change that, bring pork and Brazilian cuisine back into the forefront of top-end culinary trends in the country.
A Casa do Porco is the 4th on the list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants.
As the name implies the restaurant is focused around the preparation of every part of pork in many different ways bringing back the traditional cuisine of Brazil. She offers a tasting menu and a la carte and there are some vegetarian dishes as well and changes the menu constantly. A Casa do Porco has been ranked highly on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants for years. It’s a continent favorite.
I think it’s time to get out our calendars and start planning some unforgettable foodie trips for next year!