The movement to bring Amazonian ingredients into formal restaurant settings in South America’s metropolitan areas has been going on for decades, but the post-pandemic era has ushered in a new phase. The continued development of more responsible supply chains is bringing giant freshwater snails and protein-rich macambo seeds out of the real jungle and into concrete ones, creating new opportunities for creative chefs from Ecuador to Brazil. Rather than just select ingredients like the fermented yuca sauce known as tucupi or fragrant pequi oil appearing out of context as exotic garnishes in fine dining establishments, restaurant concepts are being built around their ecosystem.
Some of these restaurants—such as Meriba in Lima, Peru or Biatüwi in Manaus, Brazil—are serving typical regional recipes. Others, like Arami in La Paz, Bolivia, opened in January by Marsia Taha, formerly the head chef of groundbreaking restaurant Gustu, whose current chef Kenzo Hirose was born in the Amazon, are reimagining how local ingredients might fit together with the help of modern kitchen tools and global trends. AWA, which opened in October inside a minimalist space filled with tropical plants and indigenous art in the fashionable Lima district of Miraflores, is among the latter.
“The consistency of the ingredients and the viability to get them to restaurants has changed,” says AWA’s chef and owner Aldo Yaranga, who has spent years developing a logistics network of high-quality regional foods, first with the now-closed fine dining restaurant Malabar and later with the iconic, family-run La Patarashca restaurant in the Amazonian city of Tarapoto and its food hall outlets in Lima. A few years ago, a seasonal Amazonian restaurant like AWA would not have been possible in the Peruvian capital.
In addition to being more willing to try unfamiliar ingredients, diners are more aware of the forest economies that maintain biodiversity and are open to paying higher prices to restaurants working directly with rural and indigenous producers, such as those in the San Martin province, as in the case with Awa. Rather than surging demands caused by superfood claims or social media trends that can create further disruption, the aim of this new generation of Amazonian restaurants in the region’s capitals is a more balanced approach. Their support places value on ancestral foodways and the communities that safeguard them as a whole, instead of extracting their parts, piece by piece. This evolving understanding and retooled infrastructure allow Yaranga to showcase troves of tiny chiles that are pickled for salads, obscure jungle fruits like the sweet and acidic taperibá for his ceviche marinade, and vanilla from Awajun communities to flavor duck. It allows him to keep the menu rooted in regional Amazonian foodways even as he pushes boundaries of what can be done with them.
Of particular interest are the freshwater fish species like paiche and gamitana, flown on ice in prime conditions—as good as anything from the Pacific Ocean just down the street. They are listed on the menu as tartare seasoned with an XO sauce made of dried paiche, salted pork, and chiles, or in the curry-like mishkina, an Amazonian turmeric paste. Those same fish, as well as native game like the rodent paca, also appear as charcuterie-like smoked hams, pastrami, and chorizos, plus garums (fermented fish sauces) made from river clams, which Yaranga helped develop with the Mijano Amazon Lab, a burgeoning gastronomy research center in Tarapoto. “The challenge is to get diners to connect, learn about, and consume more ingredients from the Amazonian pantry,” he says.