(Click here for more on Acurio’s new place and a full review of Peruvian restaurants in Buenos Aires.)
By Fiorella Donayre
Gaston Acurio seeks to create a new image for Peru on the world stage and he’s convinced that globalizing Peruvian cuisine is one of the best ways to do that. He and a new generation of Peruvian chefs are dedicated to the task.
The Argentine Post interviewed Acurio by telephone from Lima last month. Here’s an excerpt of the conversation.
TAP: Having successfully opened various Astrid & Gaston restaurants in Latin America and beyond, how do you maintain the level of quality that you offer. Are you worried about overextending yourself?
GA: Of course I have this concern, but my biggest worry would be to stop a process that the chefs of my generation consider to be a task that we’ve been given – to globalize Peruvian food as a way to build a new image of our country in the world. We are trying to export our culture. There is a need to promote a new value for what Peru produces and to improve Peru’s standing in the world. Food can serve as instrument to that end and that’s our mission and our responsibility as chefs.
There are some risks that you can’t control quality. What we try to do is build a simple philosophy based on principles such as the absolute respect for fresh ingredients, for the customer. We try to form a family within each restaurant based on these principles, to always focus on the result of the plate that ends up on the table and not about the restaurant’s bank account.
In Buenos Aires, Roberto Grau is the protagonist, the artist, the one called upon to run the restaurant successfully. What I do is inspire, motivate, give some solutions to the problems he may have, to advise him, but in each country there is a Roberto Grau who has the same mission that I had in the beginning. So, to some extent we are a small army of cooks who are very united and compromised with an objective that goes beyond mere cooking.
TAP: Do you think the rising interest in Peruvian restaurants outside of Peru will lead people to want to cook Peruvian food in their homes? If so, do you think there are investors interested in supplying grocery store demand?
GA: The other day I had lunch with the general manager for Grupo Cencosud, one of the largest supermarket chains in Latin America, and he told me that beginning this year they will put a “Peruvian Corner” – and entire aisle full of the ingredients necessary to make Peruvian food – in their supermarkets in Argentina, Chile and Brazil because the demand is growing. This is the culmination of what we are trying to do; if we can put Peruvian food in the spotlight, let people discover it in Peruvian restaurants, make it at home with Peruvian cookbooks, we are opening the possibility for these products to enter the markets and supermarkets.
If we look at the global cuisines of today – Japanese, Italian, French – the most recent to emerge is Japanese cuisine. Thirty years ago if someone were to tell you to go eat raw fish, algea or wasabi, you probably would have hated it for the rest of your life because mentally it was a disagreeable experience for most people. Thirty years later, Japanese food is one of the most fashionable cuisines in the world and there isn’t a major city that doesn’t have Japanese restaurants. There must be hundreds of Japanese restaurants in Buenos Aires, you can find Japanese products in supermarkets, and the bars – even the ones that aren’t Japanese – stock sake on the shelves. We Peruvians are just beginning this process. With our repertoire of ceviches, tiraditos, causas, anticuchos, rices, and stir fries, there is no reason why Peruvian food shouldn’t be where Japanese food is today within 30 years. It’s all up to my generation of Peruvian chefs to do things correctly.
TAP: You mentioned the plan to spread Peruvian food awareness across Latin America through supermarkets. What about the United States?
GA: That’s the biggest market, the main objective. We just opened a restaurant in San Francisco in the best part of the city. I put my cevicheria right next to the best French restaurant, the most successful restaurant in the city. I raised my flag in the most emblematic part of San Francisco with the goal of starting out on top in the minds of American consumers. San Francisco is known across the United States for its sophisticated food scene and good living. That makes it the best doorway into the rest of America.
*Fiorella Donayre is a Peruvian lawyer who moved to Buenos Aires in 2004. She completed the professional chef’s program at Mausi Sebess in 2006 and has worked as a pasante at the Caesar Park Hotel’s Agraz restaurante in recoleta and at El Senorio de Sulco in Lima.
