Climb the mountain, wander around with a high-def sky and fresh air, and minutes later, sit and eat with each plant you saw minutes ago.
Exploring Peru’s Andean Culinary Traditions Through Immersive Farm-to-Table Research and Fine Dining Experience
Text By Daniel Quintero
History is a cycle and repeats itself; just a few meters from the Inca research zone, the Moray archeologic sight, and a couple of hours away from Cusco city, Malena Martinez, her brother Virgilio and his wife Pía León created a research center for products and techniques.
A modest adobe house with a natural roof holds the research offices on one side and the other end, passing the central patio, the dining room where the #MundoMil experience takes place. However, the immersion process starts a few hours earlier with a walk around the fields; with each meter you walk, you can see the farmers doing their work.
We wandered around quinoa and amaranth fields that season and saw potato fruits, mashua roots, flowers like Kjolle, and even different fava beans with abstract patterns.
To taste what we have seen, we began with tasting fermented drinks and distillations made in-house with these Botanics. MIL is not a space for great long tables; it is more of an introspected experience with groups of three maximum of four diners. ach second is curated to be an actual experience; the ambiance has music specially done by Maribel Tafur, a MIL soundtrack.
The food is Pia and Virgilio’s interpretation, where the culinary technique is applied creatively by the team led by Luis Valderrama, and the seasonal produce is the star. These eight steps included corn, oxalis, lupin, quinoa, lamb, pork, duck, potatoes, mashua, and cacao threaded by a play on textures, combined with the traditional and nontraditional way to use them as the Chapla bread of coca leaves filled with oca, the different corn chips with cheese or a more conventional Andean preparation native potatoes cooked in clay.
To visit MIL is an experience that everyone in the food world should do; connect with the land, see how produce grows from their communities, understand where they come from and how they become part of the fine dining menu, and see how in a single point converge past, present and future of Perú.
Reservations are open now, plan your trip to cusco and enjoy the Mater Experience
