Living in Peru : your everyday companion

By Nathan Paluck

It's safe to say Peruvian food has arrived. The cuisine is adored by foodies and praised by critics – most recently by a Chilean who declared Lima as “the culinary capital of the Americas.” Peruvian restaurants are opening across the globe and in Lima it's difficult to keep up with the pace of new restaurants doing amazing things in the kitchen.

And Peruvians know their food is all that. There's a  buzzing culinary pride that exists not just among the chefs but ordinary Peruvians alike: A taxi-driver can wax poetic for half the ride about his favorite dishes.

There's now a film, opening Dec. 10 in Lima and running for a week, that documents the ascension of Peruvian food worldwide, the pride back home and the folks who prepare it. De Ollas y Sueños convinces us, with a gastro-ethnography that profiles restaurant owners, fishermen, campesinos and more, that Peru's rich diversity of people and landscape is what makes the cuisine so, well, rich and diverse.

“Food is an accurate reflection of Peruvian society,” said Bernardo Roca Rey, journalist and an early promoter of Peruvian food, at the preview of Ollas. “It's wonderful that someone has made a movie [about Peruvian food] that can be shown in theaters,” Roca Rey told LivinginPeru.

In pursuit of the Peruvians who participate in this quickly evolving culinary tradition, the film jumps from Peru's Amazon jungle to Lima to the Andean highlands to Madrid, New York, Paris and other locations. It's 75 minutes of people profiles, swirling saucepans and hundred-years-old cooking methods. The close-ups of food preparation and mouth-watering completed dishes elicited occasional murmurs of approval or gasps of “que rico!” from the audience at the movie's preview.  

Chefs, always in white uniforms, populate the documentary like modern-day priests of culture. They pay respect to the culinary traditions from which they draw upon, but there's no doubt left as to who is the authority amidst all the gastronomic excitement. We see interviews with celebrity chefs like Pedro Miguel Schiaffino of the restaurant Malabar, the Spaniard Ferran Adrià and Gastón Acurio. Schiaffino and Acurio's desire and ambition almost comes through the screen: These guys are like Olympic athletes in training, except they're competing to elevate Peru's cuisine to new heights of acclaim.
 
Ollas is most enlightening, however, when it shows ordinary Peruvians and their connection to food. In the first segment, we meet a husband and wife in Iquitos who run a humble tourist lodge. She prepares a jungle meal of mashed plantains and grilled beef often served to clients. (The tactile shots of the scrape, scrape and pound, pound of the plantains rivals any "Top Chef" camerawork.) We then see the husband approaching tourists at the Iquitos airport, trolling for potential clients. The tourists ignore him or brush him off. He leaves the airport weary, but in good spirits.

The segments that profile Peruvians abroad open a window into expat life and show us the broad-based recognition Peruvian cuisine is getting around the world.

In several quiet scenes, Peruvians are shown preparing their favorite dishes abroad. A man cooks up papa relleno in his London kitchen; a couple shops for the choiciest limes in a New York City supermarket.

A young restaurant owner in Amsterdam says that Latino food meant Mexican to most people when he first emigrated. Now his Peruvian restaurant, Sabor Latino, is packed with Dutch customers. Some groups now email him detailing their orders before they arrive.

"It made me want to go abroad and open a restaurant," a young Lima resident commented after the film.

http://filer.livinginperu.com/

Ernesto Cabellos Damián, director of the film.

Ollas was shot by Guarango, a Lima-based production company described as "the people's photographers" by its founder and director Ernesto Cabellos Damián. Guarango has documented grassroots organizing and the ills of gold mining in past documentaries like Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining.

After investigating Peru's conflicts and corruption, Cabellos Damián wanted to find a point of harmony in its society, an encuentro. He found that in the kitchen. “Throughout centuries of mixing ethnicities, of engagement and harmony, of alienation and conflict, the Peruvian kitchen has constructed a delicious, unifying experience,” he writes about the inspiration for Ollas.

The Guarango team successfully displays this unifying experience through the film's varied cast of real Peruvians – poor and rich – and their unabashed loyalty and love of their country's food.

Ollas might be one of the biggest culinary events of the year. Go with friends or family, but don't go too hungry.


De Ollas y Sueños opens Dec. 10 at Cineplanet theaters in Lima. (The English title is Cooking Up Dreams.) For more information and to see the trailer, visit Guarango's site here.

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This was really great news. My name is Esperanza Mattisson, a peruvian living in Stockholm, Sweden. Peruvian cuisine is becoming very popular here in Stockholm. Cebiche is served in all the most elegant restaurants. I have opened a restaurant in one of the most popular streets in Stockholm. It's not very easy to start a restaurant on your own, without financial support. It demands a lot of money, á 20 hours workday, sacrifices and energy not only from me but from all my family. I have been in touch with the Peruvian Embassy to try to make Gastón Acurio interested in coming here to give some kind of support and status to our cuisine without success. The answer I got is that Gastón might not be interesed in coming to a country with such small amount inhabitants: 10-12 million people. Such a shame! Sweden is the Capital of Scandinavia. A high-tech country where every new appliance going to be launch in the world is tested. The swedes are moden people who takes to its heart with curiosity the latest in every field dispite the matter whether it matters nano-technology, house appliances to make life comfortable or good food to enjoy life. I am very proud being peruvian. My regular customers are delighted and they keep bringing me new customers. My dream is to open a bigger restaurant than the little one I have here in Stockholm. There is a great potential that needs to be developed. Unfortunately I have no the financial support I require for this. I can speak the swedish language, I can the know-how, the culture, I have contacts and know how to run and do business here but
I'd love to have the support of someone who has already succeed like Gastón Acurio.

Anyway I'll keep on working harder to make my little restaurant profitable and popular among the swedes. Hope Gastón Acurio comes to Stockholm sometime and visit me. My homepage and the details of my address and phones are on: www.latinodeli.se.

Thank you for this oportunity on cyber-traveling for a moment to my beloved home country Peru.

Yours faithfully,
Esperanza Mattisson

i hope gaston acurio has the chances to read your email. it would be amazing you could  get that kind of supporting,,,if not, just keep on with your ambitions.  Our peruvian food needs to be spread worldwide and people like you  are needed.
good luck
bruno
2010

Hi Esperanza.
Forget about waiting for somebody as big as him to come to your little palce.Looks like you're doing fine,and there are two thing that will make grow over time one consistency in every plate and custumer service.
I'm a Peruvian livig in the U.S. and because you need a lot of money and family to help, i'm not able to open one. I guess i'll be here for two more years until i save enoug and go back to Peru where i can open a little hole in the wall somewhere and live happy.
Felicidades y sihue trabajando fuerte,sin esperar nada de nadie,tu esfuerzo te dara tu propia fama.
Marco

Thanks a lot Bruno for your support and encouragement for me to carry on. People like you give me more energy to keep on the truck.
Cheers!
Esperanza from Stockholm, Sweden
(right now 18 degrees below zero brr..)

Dear Marco,

You are right. The only way to succsess is working very hard and have a strong believe for your own business ideas. The swedish people are discovering the exotic peruvian taste. It is really rewarding when your customers are satisfied and that is the best sales promotion you can have. Thank you for your comments and I really hope you open your own place in Peru on a couple of years when you got back from the U.S.A.

Keep your dreams alive in order to achieve them!

Buena suerte Marco y por favor manténme en contacto cuando abras tu negocio. Un abrazo,
Esperanza

Hi Esperanza,
Thank you so much for the encouragement,rest asured that once i'll find my place in Peru,i'll contact you so you can visit when you go there for vacation. I 'd like to extend my help  if you wont to offer the vegetarian alternative in your Restaurant, you can start with a couple of plates.Tough i'm not vegetarian, i lived with my aunt ,and she was vegetarian and i learned from her how to make my own "vegetable meet" or seitan as it's called here. It's kind a long process ,but the results are great.
you can write me at my prsonal email at marcocusco#@sbcglobal.net.
Good luck and keep up the good work.
Un abrazo
Marco

Hi I live in Australia and I am desperate to watch this documentary! Does anyone know where I can get it from? Is there a DVD coming out?

Lorena, 

Here is Guarango's contact information:

www.guarango.tv/dols/contacto.html

Hi Nathan,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply! I will get in touch with Guarango. By the way... great website!!