Micha Tsumura must have been slightly persuaded to pose with the stove. He’s had too many photos taken with fire, he objected. FACES he insisted, as it required flambéing its central page. After talking, the resistance is better understood. The captain of Maido (11th place in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022) refines his speech to explain that what we know as the classics of Nikkei cuisine -tiraditos, octopus in olive oil, tacu tacu stuffed with seafood, snails in sillao, chita a la salt, salted, the use of the wok that always appears with the blessed flare- has the Japanese and Chinese influence, but was born in the heat of the Creole stoves. Of banners like Otani, La Buena Muerte, Rosita Yimura, Augusto in Callao. “And they weren’t called Nikkei but seafood restaurants. Until now you see in the center many restaurants with menus led by Nikkeis”.
What Micha means is that the categories dissolve more and more. That the game is personal. It is signature cuisine. “But each one is already in his world,” she explains. “We no longer worry about how much Japanese, how much Peruvian, it is my kitchen, it is my world, what goes through my head, what occurs to me, the dreams that come to mind.”
“Playful” is a word that jumps around more than once. But be very careful. That personal manifesto has the most clearly defined Peruvian background. Free will wins. But the identity too.
His latest Amazon foray breaks ground, as he recently reviewed Maria Elena Cornejo in CARETAS. And in that great pantry of biodiversity it has found an infinite field of games.
“We are going to put taricaya eggs on the tasting menu, which I don’t think has been done. They were in extinction and today there is already a quota”. A unique, groundbreaking kitchen. But tasty first and tasty last. Increasingly Peruvian, she acknowledges.
Asian tropical forests in places like Cambodia and Thailand and Indonesia “have exactly the same products as in Peru.” The combination of flavors changes, the techniques seek their different accents. At times it is not known if he is talking about here or there. Challenges such as using more fish and shellfish from the river, exploiting the flavors of the herbs, showing off the three theobroma cousins (cocoa, cupuaçu, Mocambo; the rich cousin, the forgotten one, the poor one).
A journey that ends in one’s own personality and in Peru. The universalization of our gastronomy involves using its products throughout the world, rather than sticking to the rule of its treatment.
The journey takes fascinating detours. Virgilio Martínez has spent a decade in a gastronomic search projected in narratives, ecosystems and altitudes. In that transit, with Central as its headquarters in Lima (currently ranked 2 of the 50 Best), he was struck by the curiosity and application of Japanese diners, interested in the most particular characteristics of the product and the common thread of the stories that served at the table.
Hence, starting his own Japanese adventure closed a circle.
“It is pure Peruvian creativity,” he says of the location of MAZ, his restaurant in Akasaka, Tokyo, which opened its doors on July 22 after delays imposed by the pandemic. “It is Peruvian creativity that pays homage to Japanese products.”
Tribute. The word applies exactly to the method that Virgil develops. There he found products with which he can work, such as a variety of potatoes with which he interprets the huatia. The soil used to cook in Peru is replaced with a mixture of salts and Japanese clays.
“Our vision, born at 4,000 meters above sea level in the Andes, now sowing its seeds beyond borders and sprouting its potential in Japan,” postulates its website.
What is very Japanese is the logistics. With only twenty seats and a tasting menu called Mundo Vertical (“a journey through nine altitudes”), with its vegetable alternative, MAZ adapts to the local style, limited and capable of meeting reservations to satisfy the visitor’s concerns.
“We are very respectful of not going too much into the Japanese. In that sense, whether out of necessity or for other reasons, Peruvians are more practical and we get used to it quickly. There, the changes must go through many processes”.
“We have approached with great respect and we have been cautious,” he warns. “The Japanese have mastered his cooking. We are not Nikkei cuisine. We are ourselves with one or the other wink. We serve as an embassy, or rather as a bridge”.
The journey of Peruvian cuisine knows fewer and fewer limits.