(Photo: Flickr)

Where were you born?

I am Mex­i­can. I was born in the Fed­eral Dis­trict, but I lived there only until I was seven and then moved to Quere­taro. I would say I’m from Quere­taro be­cause I mostly grew up there; my home, my friends and my life are there.

Did you know early on that cook­ing was your thing, or did you study some­thing else be­fore­hand?

After leav­ing school in Quere­taro I de­cided to study plas­tic arts in Paris. Be­fore going to uni­ver­sity I had to learn French, so I spent a year study­ing it and a lit­tle art his­tory. I then started study­ing fine art.

How did you get into Gastronomy?

(Photo: PXHere)

While study­ing plas­tic arts I re­alised that what I liked most was cook­ing. Every­thing re­lat­ing to cook­ing in Paris was great, so de­tailed that it cap­ti­vated me and I wanted to do it my­self; so I de­cided to study cook­ing. I wasn’t happy in Paris but I did want to stay in Eu­rope, and thanks to a friend I made con­tact with a school and moved to Seville, where I stud­ied gas­tron­omy for three years. Then I worked for six months in a re­ally great restau­rant, it had three Miche­lin stars, af­ter­wards they hired me for two years. Then I went to an­other good restau­rant, also Miche­lin starred, and so on­wards.

What were your experiences before coming to Peru?

After being in Spain for sev­eral years I was asked to take charge of a restau­rant in Mex­ico City and I de­cided to go back. I was the cre­ative man­ager of Puyol —one of the city’s best restau­rants— for a time, but I couldn’t adapt, so I moved to North Car­olina to work for a restau­rant com­pany that needed some­body to look after the qual­ity in all the restau­rants in the chain. They paid very well so I took ad­van­tage of it to save some money; then I re­turned to Mex­ico while I de­cided what I wanted to do. I worked in my fam­ily’s restau­rants, re­spon­si­ble for the bak­ing and con­fec­tionery. Dur­ing this pe­riod I was ac­cepted by a restau­rant in Tokyo, and with­out think­ing twice, off I went. I was train­ing for a few months and then they hired me and I stayed there until my work visa ex­pired a year and a half later.

How did you come to Peru?

I de­cided to go to South Amer­ica be­cause I had never been there. I was in Bo­livia work­ing on a pro­ject and some mu­tual friends —friends of mine and Vir­gilio Mar­tinez— con­tacted me to work at an event in Peru. I ac­cepted be­cause I had al­ways wanted to get to know the coun­try. I met Vir­gilio and he of­fered me a job with him when he opened Senzo, his restau­rant in Cusco. I stayed there sev­eral months and then he started other pro­jects so I came to Lima to work at Cen­tral.

What do you do at Cen­tral?

(Photo: Wikimedia)

I’m re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ment and re­search; this is very im­por­tant here be­cause all the restau­rant’s dishes have a his­tory. I am part of the Mater Ini­cia­tiva, which con­sists in in­ves­ti­gat­ing Pe­ru­vian prod­ucts. To do so we travel to the dif­fer­ent re­gions. We draw up the menu using the re­sults of this re­search work. This work is the best pre­sent I’ve ever re­ceived. Every­thing I know, every­thing I have learned over these years about Pe­ru­vian prod­ucts has been in­cred­i­ble. Some dishes on the menu stay the same, oth­ers mu­tate and yet oth­ers are re­placed ac­cord­ing to what we are re­search­ing. You can eat at Cen­tral then come back in fif­teen days to find new and dif­fer­ent dishes.

My work in­volves man­ual work and I love that. Also, I like Vir­gilio’s aes­thetic very much. At Cen­tral I’m free to do a lit­tle of what I want be­cause Vir­gilio has a lot of con­fi­dence in me. That makes me happy at my work.

What interests you the most about cooking in Peru?

The prod­uct is def­i­nitely the most in­ter­est­ing thing, it’s in­cred­i­ble. Not just the in­gre­di­ents, but how they are used. You have every­thing here, prod­ucts from the coast, the high­lands and the jun­gle, and they’re all easy to get. The di­ver­sity is im­pres­sive and every time we go on a trip what most strikes me is the prod­uct. Fur­ther­more, here in Cen­tral we use prod­ucts that no­body has cooked with be­fore, for ex­am­ple chaco clay. We use it in pud­dings, in sal­ads, in our veg­e­tar­ian menu, etc.

What is the most outstanding thing on Central’s menu?

(Photo: Wikimedia)

The in­gre­di­ents and that each dish is the prod­uct of deep re­search; each dish has a whole team of peo­ple work­ing on it.

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This interview previously appeared in Ultimate Journeys Peru