When I spoke with Virgilio Martínez, he was chef and owner of Central in Lima, Peru, a restaurant that has been consistently among the highest ranked in the World’s 50 Best, including World No. 1 in 2023, in a region the Michelin guide does not yet cover.
Martínez speaks in the book to the discipline of staying true, and he describes it as something an operator grows into. In the past, he told me, he cared a great deal about criticism and critical reviews. Today much less so. The main person who can criticize him is himself, and when he pushes himself toward deeper reflection, what he thinks about is what is good and fair for his team. That is what he cares about most. I read that reorientation as the precondition for saying no with any consistency. The operator who calibrates to the latest review will accept whatever the next reviewer suggests. The operator who calibrates to an internal standard, and to what is fair to the team, has somewhere to stand when the market asks the restaurant to become something it should not. He also told me how Central’s tasting menu came to be structured around Peruvian ecosystems by altitude, from the Pacific coast through the high Andes and down into the Amazon basin, with each course built from ingredients found together in one elevation band.
“The main person who can criticize me is myself. When I push myself to deeper self-reflection, I think about what is good and fair for my team. That is what I care about most.” Virgilio Martínez, chef and owner, Central
In the book, Virgilio Martínez appears in Chapter 11, Staying True, where his shift away from critics is the example of calibrating to one’s own standard, and where the altitude menu is the parallel case of an identity so rooted in Peru that no chef working anywhere else could replicate it. The structural choice produced a research institute as well as a kitchen, the Mater Iniciativa lab his team built around it, and I hold it up as the clearest contrast between the commodity floor of generic luxury cuisine and the specificity of place.
“with ingredients found together in the same regions, the menu practically wrote itself.” Virgilio Martínez, chef and owner, Central