The kitchen is a more experimental affair,
where high-tech gadgets from Pérez’s Cordon Bleu days alternate with ancestral techniques learned by sharing food with families in the countryside. “We cure fish by wrapping it in leaves, so we can make the umami explode,” he says. “We use the charcoal grill, but we also do sous vide. We see it as a food think-tank.” An Andean staple, guinea pig presented a
unique challenge: its meat is rich in collagen, which is lost through the traditional high- heat recipes of deep frying or fire roasting. At Quitu, it’s cooked for 72 hours at low temperatures, then roasted. “The idea is to understand what you’re preparing,” he says. “This is how tradition meets haute cuisine.”
A question of provenance Of course, Pérez knows exactly where the guinea pigs come from — he even knows what they eat. They’re part of a community- based project that sells young guinea pigs to Indigenous women, teaches them how to raise the animals, then buys them back as adults. Pérez has arranged for the guinea pigs to be fed medicinal herbs such as lavender leaves and Andean mint, working with a Quito- based company that sources herbal teas from Indigenous producers. And when it’s time, the animals are killed using an ancestral technique that minimises both suffering and toxin release.
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To Pérez, Quitu’s cuy represents the coming
together of those three elements. “It’s become our signature dish for two reasons,” he says. “The pride we feel when we serve it, and the creativity that goes into it.” The menu at the restaurant changes daily,
with a bigger, structural change occurring every month, but certain ingredients crop up regularly. One of these is a purple Andean potato called tushpa and nicknamed puca shungo (red heart). Pérez discovered it at a pambamesa event, which led him to the single family in the area that was growing it commercially and selling it to the community; the popularity of disease-resistant monocrops had led this fragrant tuber to near-extinction. Pérez asked them to send him a sack of potatoes, on which he started to experiment. “Some of them had already sprouted, which means the starch had become sugar, so they had a deeper flavour,” he says. “I started to cook them and, little by little, understand them.” Today, puca shungo is served at Quitu three ways on one plate — queso fresco cheese- stuffed spheres, 40-day-fermented tortilla cubes and 72-hour lactofermented cylinders. “Now, the family I work with have two acres of land,” Pérez continues. “They’re not only selling to me, they’re selling to the industry.” However, it’s perhaps ceviche — a dish just
as Ecuadorian as it is Peruvian — that best typifies Pérez’s approach.
Quitu’s version features Galápagos grouper,
and instead of peanuts, it’s topped with seeds of Amazonian macambo, a close cousin of cacao with all the creaminess of white chocolate but none of the cloying sweetness. Although common around the Galápagos
Islands, the grouper’s limited range makes it vulnerable to overfishing. To minimise impact, it’s fished one by one, and even a single spoiled fish is a significant waste. In 2013, Pérez spent two weeks living in the village of Puerto Lopez with a family of fishermen, observing how they worked — a knowledge he then applied to source the grouper. To streamline the process, he collaborated with ShellCatch Ecuador, which develops apps that connect restaurants directly with fishermen. “That came four hours ago,” he says, pointing to a chopped fillet in the process of being plated. “All the fishermen we work with have GPS, so we can see on our phones where they are. As soon as they catch something, I click ‘order’.” Eventually, Pérez plans to relocate Quitu to
farmland just outside Quito, so the restaurant can grow some of its own ingredients. “I see the city as a culinary destination,” he says. “We need to work a lot, to improve. We need to be responsible for our sourcing, encourage producers to become more responsible and show travellers all the delicious food we have in the country — all in one place.”
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