-We're working with about
350 ingredients in the menu.
The okras, different colors --
the barks, the coca leaves.
You are trying 350 ingredients
in one experience.
And probably 70% of them
you've never tried ever before,
so that's quite unique.
Cambo seeds,
different varieties of corn.
What is happening here,
I think,
is bigger what you expect
that happens in a restaurant.
And that's fun for us.
Here, we're fermenting different
ingredients from Cusco,
like fermented corn.
We're just
experimenting here.
What's gonna happen
with this?
I don't know.
It's gonna be fun, anyway.
It has to be unique.
It has to be very different
to what you've
ever experienced in your life.
It has to be something
that you remember, you know,
not for only 1 year,
I mean, for 20 years.
♪♪
Central is a restaurant
that talks about biodiversity.
We set experiences based on
the altitudes of Peru,
our territory.
Talking about flavor,
like, it's very --
It's quite diverse,
what we find here in Peru --
chiles, tubers, starches, corn,
fruits coming from the jungle.
Lots of seafood.
So, everything is quite like
a melting pot happening.
♪♪
Most of the plants that we're
getting from different parts
of Peru, as you can see,
they are very colorful and nice.
We're using them for the liquids
for the infusions.
Again, here we stop because
we do a brief introduction
of all the ingredients
that you're gonna try.
♪♪
We're gonna use
all these different corn.
This is called
"diversity of corn."
We're using purple corn here,
red corn,
fried up the skin
of the corn,
and then,
we burned a bit.
See?
It's a bit burned.
This is called "kiwicha."
And then, grain.
They're also the cereals,
So, they've been
just boiled.
Then, sweet potato leaves.
You see the dish.
And when you try,
it's like you find new tastes
and new flavors,
new aromas,
that, supposedly, you don't get
when you try corn.
So, basically, today,
we're prepping for,
you know,
the service for lunch.
We've got to be ready
in about 2 hours.
Yeah, just dehydrating
the crystals of the plants
that we had in our garden.
This is pure liquid coming
from the plants and the water.
It gets quite sweet
and bitter.
Every single thing that we do
has to make sense.
That goes beyond
if it's delicious and tasty,
and if it's,
like, you know,
if we are following
the protocol.
No.
It's about, like --
This is very emotional.
If you put, like,
lots of emotion,
you're adding, like,
another level of flavor.
There's so much biodiversity
here in Peru.
Our territory is like
a wrinkled paper,
where, you see, we have
the very rich coast.
Then, we have the Andes.
So, the Andes kind of cross
to our territory,
and then, you have to pass
through the Amazon.
So, all these very diverse
microclimates,
they have their own
seasonalities,
so, that's why
it's so rich.
Here, we're getting
ingredients.
We're kind of chopping, cleaning
raw materials like this.
It's a bark that comes
from the Amazon,
and you see -- I don't know
if you are able to check, like,
how much kind of gelatin
we have here.
Yeah, it smells like coffee.
Okay. It's boiled.
He's going to boil the barks,
and we're going to obtain
the [foreign],
there, the gelatin.
So, this is quite new.
We actually know
who's producing these,
who's picking these barks.
So, yeah.
Everything has to come from
a source that we know.
It has no sense if we
just add something.
We would be, like, cheating,
you know, our concepts.
♪♪
Now, we're using, like,
100% organic ingredients.
We know who's producing
our food.
We know who is producing
our plates,
who's working on
the ceramics.
I'm gonna say,
about 6 years ago,
we stopped using ingredients
that were coming from abroad.
A few years ago,
we stopped using ingredients
that we had no idea
they were coming from.
We have all these
pseudo-cereals,
all these grains, all these
different tubers and potatoes,
so why not using the starches
from all these ingredients?
If I want to thicken something,
I have lots of ingredients.
We don't use any sugar
in the restaurant.
There's no sugar.
We do reductions of fruits.
They're very,
very sweet.
So, why not just using them
instead of using sugar?
Yeah, this is great.
They look like rocks.
We saw one Andean community
eating potatoes covered by clay,
and the clay was edible.
Well, I'm easily surprised
by seeing people eating clay.
You know, it has
so many purposes.
So, they were eating clay
as a medicine.
That chaco clay, for me,
was a nice discovery.
We have a few plants,
like this coffee bean,
a whole plant of coffee.
We have to ferment this.
Then, we have to dry it,
and roast it.
And then,
we do coffee with this.
Mmm.
This is Mater Iniciativa.
So, Mater Iniciativa is
the research arm of Central.
When Mater Iniciativa
was created, like, 6 years ago,
my sister and I,
we did this work of traveling,
and visiting different places
that we've never seen before.
And, of course,
we needed translators,
linguists, anthropologists,
and a whole group of people
working in different fields.
They helped us
a lot to understand
how these local communities,
how they work, what they want.
We're working, now,
on cataloging ingredients,
which is quite amazing.
I mean, like, we have
a whole range of ingredients.
We had no idea they exist.
We had no idea they were
even edible,
and now,
we're using them.
So, we need to gather
information for us
and for whoever is coming.
Here, you see
all these different elements,
different seasonings.
Amazonian beans, different
leaves from different trees,
peppers, herbs, aromatics,
fruits, dehydrated seeds,
different cacaos,
different quinoa, you know?
10 years ago,
maybe 15 years ago,
we had no chance to do
something like this.
You know, time change.
♪♪
Well, this has
the Amazonian tubers.
We're drying them out.
We're cooking them,
but very, very slowly.
So, they're going to get,
like, a nice aroma.
People in Lima don't know much
about this tuber.
It's called "dali dali,"
from the Amazon.
I think our job is to find
different ways to cook it.
We truly believe that
we're just cooks.
But we have to cook
with the people,
and the people has the
knowledge, outside in Cusco,
outside in the Amazon,
in the jungle.
So, why not go there?
That's why I have to go there
once a week to these places.
And that's why we have teams
working there right now
in the jungle,
in the Amazon, and in the Andes.
Some ingredients,
they were just about
to getting lost
in the jungle.
I mean, this, yeah,
this is the very strong cacao,
but this is not native.
This is our cacao,
native one.
So, we need to
protect this one.
But this is more
about our heritage.
This is more about us,
So, we're working on,
you know,
how this one can beat
this one, kind of --
or how they can, you know,
live together.
In the area, of course,
gastronomy and the restaurant
is a good platform
to show this.
Yeah, Mater Iniciativa
has an agenda
which is different,
but we're close.
We work very close
with Central.
We serve healthy food, but what
we do is not healthy, sometimes.
So, we live
full of contradictions.
Well, working
the crazy hours,
the amount of coffee
that we drink,
and, you know,
the level of concentration
on just some
specific things,
I mean, sometimes
it's not healthy, you know?
Yeah, this is my office.
You know, it's a mess.
Most of the time,
I'm in the kitchen.
Sometimes, I sleep here.
You see, like, yeah.
Books about potatoes,
you know?
[ Foreign ]
for Dummies.
"How to Be
a Better Father."
Okay. This is the supplier's
entrance for Central,
and this is my house.
So, this is home
for me, yeah.
For me, it's, like,
it's very quick to go,
like, to sleep.
I have a quick escape.
Catching a flight to Cusco
for the morning,
and coming back
for the night service here,
it's pretty much, like,
you know, too much.
I do enjoy it.
I wouldn't change it.
That's it.
I mean, yeah, you need a level
of obsession, you know,
just to be committed to work,
sometimes, crazy hours,
but, you know, like, we create
this ecosystem where we are,
like, all the time together,
searching for new ingredients.
Here, basically,
we clean the water.
So, we have a huge room
for the water system.
Ah. It's nice,
sparkling water.
This water is coming
from the Andes.
This water has to be,
you know,
in the perfect way
that we need it.
In order to have
something special,
you need to work
on lots of details.
You cannot take
for granted things
that are very, very common,
like water.
And, of course,
we do have to be very strict,
committed to our work,
committed as a team
to the food we serve,
and not just for the guests,
just for us.
It's important for us
to be sure
that we are doing something
which is good,
and not only good for us, also,
like, good for other people,
for the communities
that we work with.
It's a red tuna.
It's a fruit that we get
from the cactus.
Yeah.
At Central, we do 40 people
for one service --
only 40 people.
You have an experience
for 4 hours, 5 hours.
You have to enjoy it.
Like, 5 hours, you know?
We have to
make an impact.
At one point,
you are not feeling
that you are
in your comfort zone.
People is feeling like
they're getting lost,
things that
you've never tried before.
But our work is to make
these things familiar.
It is the fruit
of the cactus.
You know, the cactus?
You see these red fruits?
So, we make emulsion
with that fruit.
Thank you.
If we want to do
something different,
we have to think beyond
what the restaurant is.
That give you
the possibility to think
that you are
provoking changes
not only for the guests,
the team, myself.
You are provoking changes
in our geography,
in the Andean communities,
with the people
that we work with.
And, actually,
we see that.
I think that, you know,
if I have a mission,
it probably is about
creating teams.
You know, this team,
they will be knowing more.
I mean, it's endless.
There's no way
I would be able to know
everything
that is happening.
I don't have access.
But the teams
that we are creating,
they are doing this job,
and it will be happening
in 20 year, 30 year, 40 years.
It's funny because I've always
wanted to be a designer,
you know, but I didn't know
what to design.
And now, I think
we are designing new experiences
where there are
multi-disciplinary things.
It's difficult to explain
this in words.
I mean, for me,
it's more easy --
It's easy to explain this in the
plates, you know, cooking.
This is my thing.
♪♪
♪♪
