Virgilio Martínez, the chef behind Central in Lima — regularly ranked among the world's best restaurants — has been named this year's recipient of the Andorra Taste Award, a prize that honours cooks who treat food as an expression of place.
The award fits Martínez neatly. Through his restaurant and the research collective Mater Iniciativa, he and his team have spent years travelling across Peru — coast, high Andes, Amazon basin — documenting native ingredients and learning from the communities who know them best. His cooking is less about technique for its own sake and more about putting rare Peruvian plants, grains and traditions on the plate, and letting them explain where they came from.
The recognition was handed out at Andorra Taste, a food gathering now in its fifth year, held in the parish of Escaldes-Engordany from September 16 to 20. The event's theme is how geography — altitude, climate, terrain — shapes what we eat, which is why a chef like Martínez makes sense as its headline name. He delivered a talk titled "Afuera Hay Más" ("There Is More Outside"), walking the audience from Andean peaks into the Amazon with three dishes that each carried a story of origin. The title works as a philosophy too: for Martínez, the interesting stuff is always beyond the kitchen door.
He was in good company. France was this edition's guest country, and the lineup included Emmanuel Renaut of the French Alps, Italian chef Riccardo Gaspari, Spain's Paco Roncero, and the Torres brothers, the twin chefs behind Madrid's Dos Cielos.
For travellers, this is a nudge in two directions. Andorra in September is a genuinely pleasant proposition — small, walkable, mountain-cooled, and with a surprisingly serious food scene for a country of its size. Escaldes-Engordany, the spa town that hosts the event, sits just outside the capital Andorra la Vella and makes an easy base. And if the talk of altitudes and Amazonian ingredients makes you hungry for the real thing, Lima remains the natural starting point: a city where tasting menus built on native Peruvian species are no longer a novelty but a movement Martínez helped start.
The bigger takeaway is that food tourism keeps shifting away from famous restaurants and toward famous landscapes. Awards like this one reward chefs who can explain a place through its ingredients — and they give travellers a ready-made itinerary: eat where the ecosystem is the point.
