Pía León: "The most important thing is to offer honest cuisine"

At just 34 years old, Peruvian Pía León has been named "World's Best Female Chef 2021" by the "The World's Best Restaurants" association. León, who studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu school in Lima, has worked for 10 years as head chef at Central restaurant, along with her husband Virgilio Martínez. In 2018 she opened Kjolle, her own restaurant.

Pía, why the name Kjolle?
Kjolle is a tree that grows at extreme heights in Peru. It has a bright yellow and orange flower that I love. Our Mil restaurant, which is in front of the ruins of Moray, at 3,000 meters above sea level, is surrounded by a landscape starring these trees, and that's where I came up with the idea of naming my restaurant after it.

How do you feel about being named the best woman chef in the world?
Very happy. This award is a motivation for the whole team to keep growing. And it also implies a responsibility and more pressure. More people come to the restaurant.

What is the mission and vision of Kjolle? 

Our mission is to offer a local and quality product that has undergone as little intervention as possible. Traditional local ingredients from the past that we bring back to the present are cooked in different recipes. 

We recover traditional recipes from Peru, from home, and reinterpret them. For example, in the Andes people in the past were very used to eating máchica, which is a kind of Andean cereal powder mixed with milk, and here we now use that flour to make máchica bread which is something that surprises people with tasting this ancestral ingredient cooked differently.

How would you describe your cuisine?

Just as the cuisine of the Central restaurant Kjolle is more conceptual, that of Kjolle is more intuitive. It's very much guided by the produce of seasons, what nature offers at any given moment to consume. It can change very quickly. What interests me most is to show the biodiversity of Peru.

What kind of ingredients are the protagonists in Kjolle's menu?
From the coast seafood obviously. From the Amazon a lot of fruit and from the Andes, tubers, roots, and grains. We like to present the dishes with the name of the product, as simple as that, and we try to intervene as little as possible in the culinary process so that the ingredient arrives on the plate as pure as possible.

What kind of influences inspire you when creating your dishes and recipes?
The biggest influence for me is travel without a doubt. Not only have I had the opportunity to get to know Peru, but I have been able to travel with my husband Virgilio for 10 years to many places around the world. To travel is to go a little bit further. For a cook, it is necessary to get out of the kitchen and share and learn in other countries.

Tell us a little bit about Mil.
Mil is a fully sustainable restaurant that we have in front of the archaeological ruins of Moray. We offer a tasting menu in 8 steps elaborated basically through tubers and roots cooked with ancestral methods. It is in itself a gastronomic experience, with a very deep and intense concept. Before eating, we visit the local communities, the orchard where the roots and herbs are harvested, and after, the meal in front of a landscape that is one of the most impressive and magical in Peru.

For what purpose is Mater born? What is it?
Mater is a research project on ingredients and culinary techniques, led by my sister-in-law Malena, from which we feed the rest of the restaurants. It aims to rediscover communities and products that were used in the past and recover the ancestral gastronomic memory of Peru. Mater is the concept that unites the other restaurants. Nutritionists, anthropologists...

What does sustainable cuisine mean to you?
The most important thing is to offer honest cuisine and to respect the season, the product, and the size. If you don't have to consume something that month, don't do it. The most important thing is to be honest with who you are, what you cook, and what you propose.

What is your all-time favorite dish? 
The "Locro", is an Andean stew made with vegetables such as pumpkin (a kind of squash), potatoes, and corn with cheese.

What is the gastronomic richness of Peru that differentiates it from other Latin American countries?
Apart from the richness and gastronomic diversity of Peru, the difference from other countries lies in the pride and confidence of Peruvians towards our cuisine. We love the gastronomy of our country. We get up thinking about what to have for breakfast, what to have for lunch, and what to have for dinner.

What next project do you have in mind?
We are going to open a restaurant in Moscow which will be called "Olluco", which is the name of a Peruvian tuber and our next goal is to open a restaurant in Japan as well.

What does luxury mean to you? 
For me, luxury is simplicity, although it is a word whose meaning can change for oneself over time. It can be being in a landscape, in a territory as natural and real as possible, or having good service in a restaurant, simple, friendly, and close. After the pandemic, this concept has changed for many people. For me now it is also to have quality time.