Who Are the Chefs Behind the World’s Best Restaurant?

Lima is the world's most exciting culinary capital, and this restaurant proves it.

Fourteen years after prepping, cooking, and serving its first dishes, Lima-based Central took home the title of the World’s Best Restaurant in June, the first South American establishment to be awarded the accolade in the 50 Best’s 21-year history.

Central is the brainchild of Peruvian chef Virgilio Martínez. Today, he and chef Pía León direct Central, a dynamic husband-and-wife team whose story begins behind the burners in 2008 when, after many years working outside of Peru, Martínez was pulling together the concept of his first restaurant. Fresh out of culinary school, a young León applied for a job, and in 2009, Central began service out of a converted townhouse in Lima’s Miraflores district and a year later, the couple started dating.

The Path to the Peruvian Palate

After finishing high school, Martínez followed in his father’s footsteps to study law but soon packed it in; he had also moonlighted as a semi-professional skateboarder, but one too many accidents ended that dream. Tasked with getting some further education, culinary school beckoned.

“I felt constrained by Lima, so after dropping out of college, I thought cooking would open up the possibility to travel and that I’d easily find work around the world,” he says. Looking to broaden horizons outside of Peru was the norm for his generation, given that he grew up under the threat of the Shining Path terrorist group. “We were raised to leave Lima as it was dangerous,” adds Martínez.

He honed his experience working for Peruvian culinary godfather Gastón Acurio in Europe and the U.S., and soon found Central’s modus operandi: deciphering Peru’s biodiverse ecosystems by bridging the Andes, the Amazon, and the Pacific Ocean on a single tasting menu called Mater Elevations. It’s one of Lima’s first restaurants to appreciate Peru’s fascinating pantry that starts in the Pacific waters and culminates at more than 12,000 feet above sea level, encompassing 6,000 native potatoes that come in a bountiful bow of colors and shapes, Amazon fruit, and river fish, and even edible Andean clay. Diners quickly understood–and appreciated–Central’s efforts in serving Peru at the fine dining table.

The first time Central entered the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list was in 2013 when it ranked number 50. Later that year, when Latin America released its first list, Central rocketed up the charts to place fourth, then clinched the regional top spot four times over several years, ping-ponging between first place with fellow Lima-based restaurant Maido. Central finally took the global number-one spot this year, with Maido, Kjolle, and Mayta also ranking in the World’s 50 Best, confirming the Peruvian capital’s reputation as the world’s most exciting dining destination.

A Family Affair

Changes have proved positive for the couple, and a move to Lima’s Barranco neighborhood in 2018 allowed León to spread her wings. After leading Central as head chef, she then opened her first restaurant, Kjolle (number 28 on this year’s list), named for an orange-yellow Andean flower, in Casa Tupac, the purpose-built premises that houses Central (as well as Mater Iniciativa, the restaurant group’s biological and cultural research center led by Martínez’ sister Malena). That same year, they opened Mil, a third restaurant in Moray in the Cusco region next to the site of an Inca agricultural experimentation station.

León says, “It was time for me to take on new challenges, but I needed my own space–moving to Casa Tupac allowed that to happen. Of course, it presented me with the dilemma of whether I should leave Central or not, but the advantage of being under the same roof meant I could be in both places.”

Three years after opening Kjolle, which has a similar take on fine dining but with many dishes served family style in a bright ambiance, León was named World’s Best Female Chef.

This isn’t just a story about two cooks who fell in love and created the world’s best restaurant; there’s also a third player. Malena Martínez is instrumental in the research and investigation that goes on behind the scenes as the leader of Mater Iniciativa, “an interdisciplinary organization that aims to articulate knowledge through research, interpretation, and cultural expressions.”

Malena created a sustainable food chain with the CC Kacllaraccay and CC Mullak’as-Misminay Indigenous communities in the Cusco region to source products such as chuño (freeze-dried potato) or tarwi (Lupinus mutabilis) for the three restaurants,

She also drives forward cultural and art projects. One such collaboration was creating khipu, interactive knot records made with ichu Andean grass and produced by the Inca civilization, in a joint venture between women from CC Kacllaraccay and artist-in-residence Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos. Today, one of these works hangs in Kjolle.

Living and working in Barranco means that the chefs behind the world’s best restaurant, who married in 2016, can easily spend downtime with their six-year-old son, Cristobal.

“One of the nicest things is talking with him and practicing sports together. He’ll dress up as a soccer player, and I have to kick him the ball 30,000 times,” laughs Martínez. “And with Pía, we love going out to eat. Life isn’t too rock ‘n roll these days.”

What the Future Holds

As for future plans, Martínez is currently reading up on the Caral-Supe civilization, a pre-Columbian society based in northwest Peru, and planning an expedition to Madre de Díos in the Amazon region.

“We’ve long used Amazon river fish such as paiche and pacú in the restaurant, which we’ve started aging, and are now looking at distilling Amazon ecosystems,” he adds.

A destination to keep an eye on: could this be the next region that the Central team will be plating in? Whatever these culinary geniuses do next, we can count on it being delicious.