Investigation and preservation are front and center at Central, chef Virgilio Martínez’s research institute and culinary crown jewel, located in Lima, Peru. Named best restaurant in Latin America three years running, Central Restaurante, moving beyond the warehousing of seeds and plant specimens for use by future scientists, offers a new (and delicious) path forward in a world where long-term food security is increasingly uncertain. So if you happen to find yourself in the area, treat yourself to a night on the town, and your dining dollars might help save the world in the process.
Peru, current culinary darling, has no shortage of fancy restaurants. Nor does it suffer any lack of incredible comestibles. But much as is occurring in the world at large, a large portion of these ingredients remains little known and even less accessible to city-dwellers, and they risk being lost as both the habitats and the cultures they have traditionally thrived within shrink.
Enter Mater Iniciativa:
Mater Iniciativa is run by Malena Martínez, sister of Central’s Virgilio. Her multidisciplinary team, boasting not only culinary experts but also an anthropologist, a geographer, etc., ventures out of the capital city each month to far-flung points Peruvian—everywhere from rich and riotous Amazonian riverbanks to figuratively and literally breathtaking Andean peaks—in the hopes of locating interesting ingredients and establishing meaningful relationships and learning opportunities with the communities who use them.
Botany experts back in Lima then help to identify the carefully selected specimens’ scientific names while investigating old and new uses for these little-known ingestibles. As explained in Mater Iniciativa’s mission statement, “Our motivation is to know the origin of those ingredients and tell their story from the beginning, and they are then presented to the world in the dishes we create.” Some niche traditional flavors are made more widely known, while other centuries’ old traditions are given a new spin.
All this translates into some wonderful dishes for diners, at least for those with the wherewithal to foot Central’s not un-pricey bill. What, precisely, do I mean by wonderful? Nothing short of mouth-wateringly delicious and jaw-dropingly gorgeous.
Just see for yourself:
But the discovery and diffusion of knowledge don’t stop at a set of double-swing restaurant kitchen doors:
Once a month we convert Central into a study center. At Mater Iniciativa we believe in sharing knowledge and the importance of meeting with professionals of various specialties for the exchange of information. We offer talks about diverse subjects such as organic cultivation, native legumes, and Amazonian palm trees among others. Thanks to alliances that we've formed with the Consejo Nacional de Tecnología e Inovación del Perú (CONCYTEC - National Advisory of Technology and Innovation of Peru), and L'Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD - The French Research Institute of Development), we have experts that lead the sessions and help us understand the magnitude of our findings.
—Mater Café
The importance, possible implications, and “magnitude of [their] findings” is hard to overstate. Maria Darias of the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD—National Research Institute for Sustainable Development) explains:
In Peru, new animal and plant species are continually being discovered, but at the same time, they are already under threat due to biodiversity loss. That is why Mater’s investigation is so important: studying new or little-known products and introducing them to an international audience helps showcase the value of our natural richness and spread awareness about the importance of conserving it.
—Mater Café
* * * * *
Let’s now compare Mater Iniciativa’s brand of environmental and cultural engagement with that of seed banks.
Forward-looking conservation in the face of current biodiversity loss and expected future losses is the well-known goal of seed banking projects such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, the Australian Grains Genebank, and the Millennium Seed Bank in England. Set up to aid research and development efforts for the artificial selection of favorable plant traits, and to act as a fallback option in the event of catastrophic plant species loss, these seed banks are fantastic initiatives that enjoy a huge amount of public support.
But seed banks’ much-hyped secure icy vaults nonetheless remain at the mercy of both geopolitical twists and turns and climate change, just like the rest of us. Who knows how international, particularly European, research access and collaborations at the Millennium Seed Bank might be affected by a possible Brexist, for instance. And even Norway’s permafrost is turning out to be not so permanent after all and is melting, making the seeds’ safe space there a little less safe. In short, the long-term security and viability of seed banks is, unfortunately, less than clear.
Not only that, we need to keep in mind the goal of these stockpiles: seed banks are set up to preserve specimens of things we already know we have. But what about the things we don’t already know we have? After all, our exploration of the planet is far from complete. What about all the plant and animal species still unknown or only somewhat known to us? What about everything out there that’s still left to find? Just think of all the as yet undiscovered things our world contains and the uses we might find for them . . .
Peru is one of the most biologically diverse countries on the planet, so much so that it’s earned the distinction of being one of only 17 of the 195 countries in the world to be classified as “megadiverse.” Megadiverse countries must have 5,000 endemic plant species at least, as well as contain or border marine ecosystems, themselves typically rich in flora and fauna. These 17 repositories of natural diversity contain, collectively, approximately 70% of all plant and animal species on Earth. What culinary, medicinal, or even industrial wonders might be lying in wait amidst such abundance, ripe for present or future sustainable use?
Mater Iniciativa’s slogan is Afuera hay más. This has been rendered somewhat clunkily in English on their website as “There is more outside,” but it would be more aptly expressed—in this humble translator’s opinion—as “There’s more out there.”
Because there is more out there. There’s still some nature left, still many amazing species left. And if we can find and understand them and their contexts, we have a much better chance not only of preserving them and their environmental and cultural habitats, but of learning how to best use them to our and our planet’s advantage.
Ms Martínez, discussing her ambitions for Mater Iniciativa, insists, “This is real, not for show. We are seriously trying to create a new language to help us understand biodiversity.”
She’s right. And she’s succeeding. There is absolutely no doubt that Central Restaurante and Mater Iniciativa are for real. But at the same time . . . boy, what a show!