Discover Maido, Latin America’s #1 restaurant – 11/30/2023 – Food

The joint movement to value Peruvian ingredients, started by the community of chefs in the mid-2000s, has today become an inspiration for other countries in Latin America, says Micha, nickname of Mitsuharu Tsumura, at the helm of Maido, voted the best restaurant in America Latin by 50 Best.

The award ceremony took place in Rio de Janeiro this Tuesday (28), at the Copacabana Palace. Maido, which is located in Lima, had already been voted the best in the region for three consecutive years, between 2017 and 2019.

Micha says that the movement to value national ingredients was led by Gastón Acurio, a kind of ambassador of Peruvian cuisine who founded his first restaurant, Astrid y Gastón, in 1994 in Lima. Acurio, who helped investigate and catalog ingredients such as Andean potatoes, even stated that ceviche, his country’s most internationally known dish, would be the new pizza.

“If it weren’t for Acurio, we wouldn’t be here. He taught us that products that came from outside the country were no better than ours. And that led us, for example, to hold the Mistura fair”, said Micha in an interview with Sheet at Copacabana Palace.

The fair, which began to be held in 2007 in Lima, was one of the events that helped to consolidate Peru as a gastronomic destination. It brings together typical restaurants, producers and famous chefs —Virgílio Martinez, number 1 in the world, according to 50 Best, was already one of the participants.

“That’s why all Latin American countries today think: ‘if Peru is valuing its ingredients, we can do it too”, says Micha. “That’s why everyone is working for their inputs, their traditions and their techniques,” she adds.

Examples include Bolivian Masria Taha, from Gustu, and Panamanian Fulvio Miranda, from Cantina del Tigre, who were also present at the ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.

“People are coming from different parts of the world to get to know Latin America and a lot of this tourism has to do with gastronomy. We are reaping the rewards, but we shouldn’t talk about countries, but about the continent. We don’t just have potatoes in Peru, we have them we share with Bolivia and Argentina, for example”, says Micha.

For the cook, the regional 50 Best event helped build a community of cooks that constantly exchanges information, techniques and products. At this year’s event, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes (PSD), announced that the 2024 edition of the award will also be in the capital of Rio de Janeiro. The city hall invested R$3 million to host the party this year.

“I don’t see this union anywhere in the world today. I have made many friends, like Jefferson Rueda and Thomas Troisgros”, he says. “We cook, we have events and sometimes we even go on vacation together.”

Maido, which works with both a closed tasting menu (899 soles or R$1,180) and à la carte dishes, recently changed its menu, which covers different regions of Peru, leaning more towards local cuisine.

The restaurant identifies itself as Nikkei (a marriage of Japanese migrant influences with Peruvian ingredients). “But little by little, with the investigation of ingredients from the Amazon, we started to make more Peruvian dishes. Although much of Peruvian cuisine, such as tiraditos, has Japanese influence”, says Micha.

He explains that the new menu has a strong influence from Arequipa, in the south of the country, where the Creole tradition is maintained, a mixture of native Peruvian and Spanish influences. “Most of the cooks in this region are women. They do everything without electrical equipment, they cook with wood and stone instruments. I learn a lot from them,” he says.

Maido
R. San Martín, 399, Miraflores, Lima, Peru. @mitsuharu_maido