The prestigious list The World’s 50 Best Restaurants has announced the choice of the Peruvian Pía León as the Best Female Chef in the world 2021, right hand of Virgilio Martínez at the Central restaurant, in Lima, and for three years at the head of his own project, Kjolle.
Central, in Lima, has earned the reputation of being one of the best restaurants, not only in South America, but in the world, present for years on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, an achievement that is attributed above all to its founder and owner chef, Virgilio Martínez. But behind the scenes, running the restaurant with Martínez for more than a decade, his right hand partner, Pía León, has been until in August 2018 when he opened his first solo restaurant -Kjolle-, of which he is co-owner with Virgilio Martínez and also co-runs another restaurant for the couple, Mil, in the Peruvian Andes.
Pía León, best female chef in the world
Pía León, 34, is a highly respected figure in the world of restoration for the role he has played in Central, which he took to number one of the fifty best restaurants in Latin America for three consecutive years with his partner, Virgilio Martinez. She started in the kitchen more than ten years ago, after a period at the Ritz Hotel in New York and a season at Astrid y Gastón in Lima, and she worked her way up to become head chef, directing the day-to-day kitchen and accompanying to Martínez and his sister Malena on their research trips to discover new ingredients for their tasting menu, based on the biodiversity of Peru.
In 2015 he began his project to open his own restaurant, a space that was his from its conception to its completion. That restaurant is Kjolle, which opened in August 2018 in the same complex as the relocated Central. That same year, León was voted the Best Female Chef in Latin America, and fifteen months after its opening, Kjolle won the Best New Entry Award when she debuted in the list of the 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America 2019 in the number twenty-one.
While Central’s twenty-something dishes are grouped by the different elevations of the Peruvian geography – the sea, the mountains, the Amazon – Kjolle’s menu is less structured, with a nine-course tasting and an à la carte menu with ingredients. from all over Peru, proposals that necessarily bear part of the hallmark that Pía León has developed over many years in Central — bright and colorful ingredients, intricately plated in a mix of specially designed plates and bowls — often presented within fragments of the nature.
Summary
Qualification
Peruvian Pía León (Kjolle), Best Female Chef in the World
Description
The prestigious list The World’s 50 Best Restaurants has announced the choice of the Peruvian Pía León as the Best Female Chef in the world 2021, right hand of Virgilio Martínez at the Central restaurant, in Lima, and for three years at the head of his own project, Kjolle.
Author
Gastronomy Journal