Latin America's Number One Chef To Open High Altitude Restaurant

Chef Virgilio Martinez, the man responsible for bringing Peruvian cuisine into the world's consciousness is undertaking a bold new venture in food, with plans to open a food lab and restaurant at the top of the Andes mountain range, in a garden terrace dating back to the Inca civilization.

Currently, Martinez is co-owner, with his wife, Pia, and chef of Central. Located in Peru's capital Lima, Central was named #1 best restaurant in Latin America in 2014 and 2015, according to The World's 50 Best Restaurants.

The Central food experience takes diners through a "culinary expedition through Peru's ecosystem", as Chef Martinez and his team actually visit forests, mountains, deserts and shorelines in search of unique local ingredients indigenous to certain parts of Peru. Crafted dishes are classified by altitude, taking customers on a gastronomic cruise from seaside to lowland to upland, in a series of courses. For example, the Andean Plateau dish, labeled 3900M, is made with tunta (dehydrated white potato) and annatto seeds, while Spiders on a Rock, labeled -5M is a crab plate famous in Peruvian seaside towns.

In 2017, Martinez plans on putting up his food lab and restaurant at a plateau of circular garden terraces up in the Andes mountains, a 45-minute drive after taking the one hour flight from Lima to Cuzco.

"Ten lucky guys will be working there," Martinez tells Bloomberg during an interview, along with an array of people such as foragers, botanists, anthropologists, and artists. "There's a lot of history in a structure like this, but I see the future, too."

Set to open in March of 2017, the restaurant is slated to be named Mil (the local word for thousand, a nod back to his altitude-based dishes). With indoor and outdoor seating, Martinez and his crew will be using only ancient cooking techniques indigenous to high altitudes in Peru, and can serve up to 60 guests at a time.

Some items planned for the menu include quinoa bark and underground-roasted tubers cooked pachamanca-style (over hot stones), mixed with a variety of locally harvested wild plants and a variety of corn species - Peru is known for producing 4200 registered corn varieties, with more than half coming from Cuzco.