A few hours after opening the doors to the first diners of the night, the best chef on the planet, Leonor Espinosa, He receives us in one of the restaurants he has in the city of Bogotá; It is in the top of the fifty best in the world and bears its same name: LEO. This cook with Cartagena roots savors an award that recognizes her talent, a merit that has cost her dearly -even dealing with machismo-, but her persistence is one of the qualities that has helped her reach the top high.
“You always hope that your work will be recognized, but I have learned to have my ego under control and I have learned to have my feet on the ground. Working with those dreams and those illusions of recognition sometimes distract one, that’s why it’s better to be calm and let them arrive -as we say in my land-, out of the blue”, Leo confesses to RTVE with a smile.
Although he has always loved cooking, his career did not start directly behind the stove. Before studied Fine Arts, Economics, worked in advertising…, a series of disciplines that have served to enrich him. “There is no inconsistency that I was this first, I was this that… Thanks to belonging to the world of advertising, thanks to having studied economics and plastic arts. today my cuisine is based on parameters that are well established, communicated and sustained”, affirms the best chef in the world.
compromised kitchen
Beyond pleasing the diner’s palate, his creations tell stories of Colombian tradition and culture. They also reflect their strong commitment to the environment, the autochthonous or the social and political situation of the country.
In the culinary experience that he makes available to his clients, he achieves what is currently unthinkable in real life: the connection of the territories of Colombia. “Every dish here tells a story. I have the way to do it, because it is a cuisine that I live in territories that have problems and a great wealth of heritage… Like the dishes arise from that experience, from being able to observe, from being able to experience the territorythen I can count them”, reveals the cook.
Betting on an innovative, original proposal, without following fashions or conventions, is part of its hallmark. “My mom used to say when I was little that he was born from ass. Imagine how mischievous she could be, irreverent, disruptive… I haven’t changed, I’m still the same”, reflects Leo.
traveling ingredients
And that effort that he puts into what he firmly believes in is the essence that can be seen in his dishes. In the restaurant, customers find Colombian products brought from the most remote places. There are a total of 85 ingredients that arrive in the capital from areas of difficult access. “There are ingredients that travel by boat, motorcycle taxi, on foot and by plane to get here. How to give value to these ingredients? How to give value to the producers? This implies that this effort to collect them must be well paid”, explains the chef with conviction.
Leo has valued all these foods, which have often gone unnoticed in the Caribbean country’s haute cuisine, and has done so by renouncing intermediaries and negotiating directly with the producer. This has helped to significantly improve the quality of life of these people who live on the fringes of large markets.
“I think we have supported producers, small producers and culinary artisans, in a way that has been noted in their well-being”, says this businesswoman, who does not stop looking for collaborators in the most remote places of Colombia.
small producers
Leo advances us one of his future proposals. In the mobile phone he saves a photo of a craft where will soon serve a fish from the Amazon. The dishes are small ovens that are being made by a local craftsman, for whom a commission with the characteristics required by a restaurant would be unthinkable years ago.
This is the line in which the cook has been working for years. “We work, for example, with drinks that enriched LEO’s gastronomic proposal and these have always come from the territories. So imagine what it means for a producer of these fermented products, which Before, he prepared one or two bottles a week, and now he has sold 80 or 100 bottles. weekly. Imagine what it can mean for him or for his small economy ”says Leo.
The best chef on the planet will officially receive the award in London next July.
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