FEBRUARY 2009: Taking ceviche global

By Eliza, Barclay

LIMA, PERU – When Carlos Ygreda launched his family-run, organic goat farm in the impoverished Chillon valley north of Lima in 2001, he found few customers for the three to five kilos of goat cheese he produced per month.

Then Ygreda joined forces with several other small organic producers to organize a weekly organic market in Lima, called the Bioferia. Slowly, venerable Lima chefs like Gaston Acurio began visiting the market, tasting the products and ordering them to serve in their restaurants.

“Chefs like Gaston have really helped us along,” said Ygreda. “The quality of our cheese is as good as imported cheeses and now the chefs would rather serve ours that the imported ones.”

Today, Ygreda’s company La Cabrita processes 100 kilos daily and sells it all. The business employs 15 people full-time, up from the four siblings who initially had to supplement their income with part-time jobs. They have also expanded the business, adding eggs and pork to their goat cheese product line.

The Bioferia has grown to 40 vendors from all over the country selling produce, prepared food, and dairy products, and has had a small ripple effect in the communities where the producers farm. Ygreda now works with other small goat farmers in Valle Chillon on improving the genetic stock of the region’s goats to get higher milk yields. With that higher productivity, Ygreda says he has witnessed a transformation in that valley.

“The rural zones have the least support from the government, and we had to fight to get government assistance in the form of vaccinations for our herds,” Ygreda said. “Now the goats in the valley are producing more and so the farmers don’t have to spend so much time looking for pastures, so the family is together more, and the children stay in school. It’s a big shift for the community.”

While there are many factors that have shaped Ygreda’s success, he credits and other farmers credit Lima’s increasingly prominent and active chefs in playing a role. Gastón Acurio, in particular, owner of 27 restaurants on three continents and the commander-in-chief of Peru’s gastronomic revolution, is helping to build new supply chains for food that may play a key role in poverty alleviation in rural areas.

“Everything in our work is inspired by putting value on Peruvian products that are undervalued,” Acurio says. “We are trying to globalize our traditions and make them global brands.”

While Acurio has already profited handsomely from the proliferation of his restaurants (his revenue in 2008 was $120 million), he also hopes the globalization of Peruvian food will benefit small producers whose niche agricultural products can be exported.

“We want to try to make a new fair trade for farmers and fisherman, and give them the culture of excellence that we have as cooks,” Acurio said. “We hope to conquer the world with our culture and create new economic opportunities. For the first time, Peruvians are proud of themselves, and one of main reasons is their food.”

Some of the producers at the Bioferia are exporting their products, and attribute some of the new market opportunities to a growing awareness of Peruvian food and restaurants overseas.

Efrain Valdivia has a company called BioAnden based in Arequipa in southern Peru, which packages and sells a variety of Andean grains like quinoa and amaranth as well as dried fruits in the form of cereal bars, granola, and snacks. Valdivia says he is beginning to sell his bars in Germany and Holland.

“There is a big export market and tremendous interest in Andean grains and Peruvian flavors, and now we are processing and toasting the grains to add value to the product,” said Valdivia. “As producers have become integrated into the supply chain we have grown to a company of 300 people.”

Mario Salsavinca is a member of a cooperative of 60 growers of fruits and vegetables from another valley outside Lima. As a gourmet food culture has blossomed in Lima with the help of Acurio and other chefs, Salsavinca and his fellow farmers have been able to grow their business and finance their children’s education.

“We now have more permanent income throughout the year,” Salsavinca. “Before, the market was less reliable.”

Ygreda hopes that the Bioferia, which currently takes up one city block in the Miraflores neighborhood, will soon expand into a permanent indoor space.

“What we’re seeing is that the chefs are giving added value to all of our Peruvian products, things like aji and potatoes,” said Ygreda. “That means there are opportunities for all of us to grow.”

One of the ways Acurio and other Peruvian food promoters hope to build an export market for products other than asparagus, artichokes and fishmeal, which are produced on an industrial scale, is through restaurants and tourism.

Inside Peru, Acurio has taken the term “celebrity chef” to new levels. Beyond the requisite television show, the cookbooks, the flashy restaurant openings, and the perpetual media attention, he designs elaborate meals for President Alan Garcia to promote the under-appreciated Peruvian anchovy, has serious tete-a-tetes with international potato scientists in the Andes about undiscovered potato varieties, and roams Lima’s streets sampling the best of the city’s cartilleros, or street cart vendors, and inviting them to his food fairs.

Though he initially planned to be a lawyer and was sent to France to earn a degree by his well-heeled family, he quickly left to study cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where he met his pastry chef wife Astrid Gutsche. When they returned to Lima in 1994, they opened Astrid y Gastón as a French restaurant.

With time, he became a master of his country’s native foods – black clams, potatoes, quinoa, and aji peppers to name a few. By 1999, the restaurant was Peruvian, showcasing his flair for teasing out the ingredients’ best attributes and reassembling them in traditional and avant-garde ways. From there, he opened La Mar, T’anta, Hermanos Pasquale, and now Panchita and La Pepa.

His success has inspired dozens of other Peruvian chefs to experiment and rediscover varieties known only to the small fishermen and the indigenous farmers in the mountains. They too want to take Peru’s food overseas; some 25 Peruvians restaurants that do not belong to Acurio will open next year outside the country.

“We have thousands of varieties of quinoa and potatoes, and Gastón has helped create demand for many things that we weren’t really eating in Lima,” said Flavio Solorzano, the executive chef of El Señorio del Sulco, a Lima restaurant devoted to preserving traditional criollo recipes. “If he says they should try it, people follow him.”

Jose Luis Chicoma is an advisor to Peru’s Minister of Trade, Mercedes Aráoz, and has been working to promote gastronomic tourism opportunities at trade shows in the United States and Europe.

The ministry estimates that there is a potential market of 2.4 million food tourists who could come to Peru specifically to eat. These same tourists, Chicoma said, would also likely buy Peruvian products in their home countries, and help solidify the export market for non-traditional exports, which made up 23 percent of total exports in 2007.

“It’s a dynamic process of building an export market for gourmet food products, and the chefs are definitely playing a role,” said Chicoma.

In addition to Acurio, Chicoma noted the contributions of Miguel Schiaffino, chef and owner of the Lima restaurant Malabar, which specializes in food from the Amazon region, and Hector Solis and his restaurant Fiesta, which features food from the northern city of Chiclayo.

“These chefs are taking regional Peruvian food to a whole new level, and helping to introduce Lima residents and tourists to many new products,” said Chicoma.

In September, La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, Acurio’s ceviche chain with branches in Lima, Mexico City, Madrid and beyond, opened in San Francisco to critical acclaim. In 2009, he plans to take La Mar to New York, San Diego and Los Angeles. He is also working to bring his casual eatery-deli T’anta to Dallas.

The decision to take La Mar to America ahead of his other franchises, which include the white-linen Astrid y Gaston and the fast-food Peruvian sandwich joint Hermanos Pasquale, was a conscious one.

Acurio suspects that Americans who know Peruvian food at all think roast chicken. Many adventurous diners have surely tried ceviche, and its semblance to sushi may be one of La Mar’s best selling points.

But Acurio is convinced that once Americans get to know other Peruvian dishes, they will find a lifelong love that will keep them coming back for more.

So he has taken cues from Japanese and Mexican restaurateurs, hoping to emulate the successes of the former and avoid some of the pitfalls of the latter.

“We don’t want to sell cheap food, like the Mexicans have done with tacos and tequila all over the place,” Acurio said. “The Japanese started with a very fine product -- sushi -- and that’s what we have with ceviche. We have to do the best restaurants we can, in the best cities, in the best avenues to compete with the best restaurants in the world.”

It is a lofty ambition in an age when there are dozens of enticing ethnic cuisines from around the world fighting to become the next big thing. But to his credit, Acurio has already proved that his restaurants can compete with the very best in Latin America. From Santiago to Mexico City, they are regularly full. Whether he can create enough demand to kick-start the non-tradition export market and benefit thousands of other farmers like Ygreda and Salsavinca remains to be seen, but certainly he is thinking about them.

“For a long time Peru was a country where people didn’t trust each other, but now I’m saying to the farmers and all the cooks and street food vendors who want to make this a better country that we need to trust each other and work together,” Acurio said. “We are building a brand for Peruvian food to conquer the world.”

NOTE: A version of this article appeared in the LA Times on 21 January 2009.