MIL, Cusco, Peru | World’s 50 Best - Latin America
The Inca Empire, aka Tawantinsuyu (meaning four quarters in Quechua), is one of the greatest Empires in American history. They were known for their architecture, agriculture and religion.
Despite being conquered by the Spanish, it has many cultural legacies passed on. Especially when it comes to food. However, people are mostly unaware of those legacies.
MIL Centro is a restaurant that aims to bring those legacies to light. Run by famous Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez, featured in Chef’s Table documentary by Netflix. He is known for his use of applying modern cooking techniques to indigenous Peruvian ingredients. His flagship Lima restaurant Central took on the 6th place of the World’s 50 Best List of 2019 and landed him in the international spotlight. MIL is his latest brainchild and a sister restaurant of Lima Central.
The restaurant highlights “ancestral cuisines” and the food are unfamiliar to most: the kitchen’s focus turns toward its surrounding Andean landscape and the techniques of the past.
Mil has a menu inspired by the altitude at which the ingredients grow. In this case, it specifically focuses on what can grow at the towering height of its own setting - 3,500 m (11,500 feet) above sea level, some extreme cases even up to 5,200 m (17,060 feet). The name Mil is another reference to the altitude, as in thousands in Spanish.
The epitome of destination dining, Mil requires a 70-minute flight from Lima to Cusco, then a 45-minute winding drive up to an elevation of 3,500 meters above sea level. It’s worth the journey - Mil is situated in the Sacred Valley, with breathtaking views of the Moray agricultural ruins, a site of ancient Inca terraces believed to be served as agricultural laboratories, as evidence showed different soil samples had been brought here for cultivation.
It is deep inside the sacred valley and hard to get to. But once you get there, you get to experience a meal of a lifetime.
MIL Centro
Vía a Moray, Maras 08655, Peru
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Welcome to my channel, I make videos on food (mostly based in NYC but also everywhere during my travel), travel (a bit of vlog style mixed in), and some cultural elements sprinkled throughout.
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Ins: fufski
Bilibili: 夫夫斯基
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3 сен 2020
