Virgilio’s vocabulary

From zero to 3.500 metres. From the ocean breeze of Miraflores, a residential and super-chic neighbourhood in Lima, to the high altitude vertigoes of Cusco, in the warm bowels of a XVI century ex-convent. Home base is still the Central, in the Peruvian capital – a hyper-modern establishment with a vegetable garden on the roof, a kitchen in view, a cellar with highlights from the South American production – but Virgilio Martinez a few months ago began to sign the menu at Senzo, a restaurant in Palacio Nazarenas, a new five star luxury hotel that Orient Express added to their already rich Andean-Amazon offer.

This 34 year-old chef, with kind manners and a nouvelle vague look, after training in the best restaurants of the world – among which Astrid y Gastón of the master Gastón Acurio (the most renowned and beloved limeño) – is today the shiniest star in the Peruvian galaxy, much applauded also at the latest Salone del Gusto in Turin, especially by the ladies present. Martinez has chosen simplicity for the Senzo project. Fewer ingredients, all super-local, a choice of only two tasting menus: one high on proteins – Trout "Tiradito" with cushuro algae and Nazarenas leaves – the other vegetairan – leek and Palo Santo emulsion with Urubamba carrots, turnip and Quillabamba peanuts (called manì) compote. He had to come closer to the gastronomic universe of the Andes: from kañiwa (an ancient Andean grain) to muña (an officinal plant available in the hotel’s “secret garden”) to the salts of Maras in the Valle Sagrado.

“I’m from Lima and the Andean world has a much stronger relation with the earth. There are products I had never used before, such as high altitude mushrooms. If I think that only 5 years ago I would have done anything to import white truffle, and now I would never use them...”. The creation of a dish, according to Martinez, is like the composition of a photo for the National Geographic: you observe nature, fix the moment, frame the landscape and then understand with what you can nourish yourself. It is in this way, for example, that Memory of shells and seaweeds from the South was born: a perfectly in focus snapshot, with various kinds of scallops and kiwicha (or amaranth) used to mimic coral.

Refined presentations, pure flavours, balances so subtle they seem algid. The diversity of a country that can boast the highest number of micro-climates in the world is faithfully reproduced on the plate. The menu of Central (and that of Senzo) is a journey among ingredients that are often unknown at our latitudes. It is like a map, in the true meaning of this word: for each dish there’s a geographic match, the central coast for the reef octopus, the Northern Amazon for the guanabana, the river Yurimaguas for the arapaima, a gigantic freshwater fish.

The influence of Japanese and Chino-Cantonese cuisine can be perceived in Martinez’s cuisine, as in all of Peru. But pay attention when speaking of fusion: “This word always tastes of plastic. The Peruvian one, however, is a real fusion, it is spontaneous, natural”. And no declarations on organic or biodynamic food are necessary: “When I hear these terms I smile – the chef continues – because over here, we’ve always cultivated like this. It’s not about fashion. I focus on farmers, on their products, on their way of life. And this already is a gastronomic experience”.