The Chefs Bringing Ecuador to the Table
Ecuador’s food scene has long been overshadowed by its neighbors. Then came Nuema.
No matter where you live, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about Peruvian cuisine. Or you know a thing or two about Argentine cooking, or Colombian restaurants. Ecuadorian food, however, has remained largely overlooked—deeply tied to its own territory and rarely part of the broader global conversation around Latin American dining. That is changing, thanks to chefs like Alejandro Chamorro and Pía Salazar, the couple behind the acclaimed Nuema, which opened in 2014 in Quito, the country’s Andean capital.
When the sleek yet intimate restaurant broke onto the list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants six years after it opened, the news spread across Ecuador’s food scene as if the country had just won the World Cup. After a wave of interviews and magazine covers, Nuema began filling up not just with Ecuadorian diners but also, little by little, far-flung travelers who explore the world through what lands on the plate.
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