At Nearly 12,000 Feet Above Sea Level, This Chef Is Rethinking What a Restaurant Can Be

Key points

• At MIL Centro in the Peruvian Andes, chef Virgilio Martínez builds his tasting menu around ingredients grown, harvested, and foraged at nearly 4,000 meters above sea level.

• Martínez features Andean ingredients like maukas, ocas, mashua, quinoa, and endemic mushrooms, alongside traditional techniques such as cooking tubers in a huatia, on his tasting menu.

• For Martínez, MIL Centro is about creating a strong sense of place, using the Andes' agricultural traditions and cooking techniques to shape every dish.

For chefs at the best restaurants around the world, sourcing ingredients is a challenge and an opportunity. It could mean heading to a market each morning to pick out the best-looking produce or flying in fish from overseas. Virgilio Martínez takes gathering ingredients to another level. The lauded Peruvian chef behind Central , named the World's Best Restaurant in 2023, helms MIL Centro , nearly 12,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains.

In Food & Wine's latest YouTube video, Martínez takes viewers inside his high-altitude restaurant, where he serves ingredients that he's grown, harvested, and foraged. At MIL Centro, the surrounding landscape and centuries-old cooking techniques shape every dish on the menu.

"For me, this is the restaurant of the future — something unique that is happening in one specific location," the chef says. It's "a restaurant in the middle of nowhere in the Andes, where you can find ingredients you've never seen before."

How the Andes shape the menu at MIL Centro

Martínez works with ingredients that are indigenous to the unique landscape of the Andes, including purple and yellow maukas, ocas, black mashua, endemic mushrooms, and more than 20 varieties of quinoa. The high altitude and distinctive soil of the mountains help these ingredients thrive and develop exceptional flavor. Martínez considers focusing on high-altitude ingredients to be both a creative constraint and a gift. "When they put this on a plate," he says of the mashuas, an edible tuber native to the Andes, "it means that we are here. They give us a sense of place."

Like his ingredients, Martínez's cooking techniques are rooted in mountain tradition. On camera, Martínez prepares a huatia, an earthen oven that's collapsed over ingredients like potatoes, ocas, and mashua so they can slowly cook underground. Recalling the first time he pulled cooked potatoes out of a huatia, the chef says, "It was a ceremony," and he expressed "a sense of gratitude to Mother Earth."

You'll spot references to Andean agriculture and traditional cooking methods throughout Martínez's tasting menu. A corn course showcases red, yellow, black, and purple varieties of the grain, each dehydrated, puréed, or crisped before being arranged on a plate that evokes the surrounding fields. A dessert pairs quinoa with a thick, honey-like syrup made by roasting the heart of the kabua plant over a fire for 15 hours, caramelizing its juices. 

Although his other fine-dining spot, Central, was named the World's Best Restaurant in 2023, Martínez says recognition is not the end goal of his work. "This idea of becoming the number one restaurant in the world, it's fantastic, it's good for exposure, but that's not the purpose of what we do," he explains. "Returning to Peru has changed the way I see food."

At MIL Centro, that altered perspective starts with the land. "Creativity happens in the soil," Martínez emphasizes. Watch the full video to see how the chef transforms rare Andean ingredients into dishes that reflect the landscape, traditions, and flavors of the region.

Fast facts: MIL Centro

Restaurant:MIL Centro

Location:Cusco, Peru, next to the Inca archaeological site of Moray

Elevation:3,568 meters (11,706 feet) above sea level

Founders:Virgilio Martínez, Pía León, and Malena Martínez

The experience:The restaurant offers a two-hour, eight-course tasting menu and longer, immersive experiences focused on the region's plants, agriculture, and communities.

Price:$360 per person for the Mundo Mil or vegetarian Mundo Vegetal tasting menu. Immersive experiences, which include the tasting menu, start at $620 per person.

Hours:Open for lunch only, Tuesday through Sunday, from 12 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Immersive experiences begin at 9:30 a.m.

Reservations:Online reservations are available for parties of one to six up to four months in advance at milcentro.pe/book .

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