It has been very pleasing to arrive at this restaurant and find that it is so attractive, so welcoming…
Every 5 or 6 years we usually make changes to freshen up the appearance and keep it attractive so that our customers won’t get bored.

How did you begin in the world of gastronomy?
I actually began many years ago, because when I finished high school in Europe I didn’t know what to do.  A friend said: let’s go to hotel school, that way we’ll be able to travel, so it was more for the prospect of traveling than anything else.  I actually began as a waiter, then stopped working for a while and went to England to study hotel management where I began to take the subject much more seriously.  Before arriving in Peru I had been in Switzerland, Germany, and England.   The English company where I worked sent me to Venezuela, and that’s how I got to South America.

So you approached cooking through hotel management?
Yes, through management, always working in hotel restaurants.

When you arrived in South America what happened?
Well, I worked in one of Venezuela’s most important hotels, the Hotel Tamanaco, as banquet and restaurant manager.  There I met a Peruvian woman and I came to Peru.  It’s been 30 years since I began my own business.

And once in Peru you began with Valentino?
Well, we actually began with a few very simple dishes, things that people like to eat, but that can be turned into a gourmet dish if well prepared.  Because even when you boil a potato you need to have technique to know how to do it.

You started in gastronomy in Peru before the boom began?

First of all, there was no boom yet; I was the one who broke the mold for restaurants in Peru.  When I stated my restaurant, all restaurant menus were like a Bible with many pages…I started with a menu of 35 choices and I told my customers, here you have everything.

So using Mediterranean types of dishes you broke the mold?
That’s right.  It was 1982.  I’ll never forget a story: a businessman who was in Lima for 4 days came with some business associates.  They were speaking English, and he asked one of the men: “Isn’t there another restaurant in Lima?  I’ve been in town for 4 days and I’ve been brought to this same place every day for lunch and dinner.” Because the weather was being affected by the El Niño phenomenon, ours was the only restaurant in the city with central air conditioning.

That happens in restaurants.  Sometimes people seek air conditioning and sometimes it is a specific dish…
We certainly introduced dishes from the start.  We were the first to serve carpaccio and we had to give it away at the beginning.

You introduced carpaccio?
It wasn’t so well known in Europe either; the Cipriani (Hotel) in Venice was the only place that served it.  Cipriani introduced it around 1950-1955.

And now they make carpaccio of everything…
Carpaccio is a whole other story.  It seems that the Irish Bar was a painting by Antonio Carpaccio, a Venetian painter of the 15th-16th centuries, and his paintings had reddish coloring.  Cipriani had one of his paintings, so he named the dish carpaccio.  Some say its origin is from the Tartars of Eastern Europe who were known to eat raw meat.  I believe the Cipriani version, and I think carpaccio has to be meat—even tuna can be carpaccio because of its red color.  But as to the other versions, well….I also prepare salmon carpaccio.

Peruvians love pasta…
I’ll tell you a story.  When I opened the restaurant I wanted to serve green cappellettis and a man told me “I can make them for you.”  It was necessary for me to have him make them because I had no time since I was doing everything at the time:  managing the kitchen, the front of house, etc.  Customers came, tried the green cappellettis, then they would try to ask for them at Restaurant Aurelia, they would try to find them everywhere, but the only restaurant in Lima that had them was mine.

Because of that you opened your store Fini?
Yes, I actually opened the store so that I could have the kinds of ingredients I needed when I wanted them.  Now (at the restaurant) we make different kinds of pasta, black gnocchi made with squid ink, something few people make, and sauce it differently.  The pastas we offer here in the restaurant are not sold in the store.

What is the secret to staying successful for so many years with the same type of food?
There are no secrets.  The trick is to avoid being distracted by things that are not important, to maintain consistency.  I’m here from 9 in the morning until 4 p.m. and then I return at 8 p.m.

How often do you change your menu?
Every 3 to 4 months, depending upon what can be prepared; this has been my secret from the start.  It isn’t that I offer what other restaurants make; what other restaurants offer doesn’t interest me, I live in my own world.

You have had great success; Valentino continues to be a very classy restaurant…
The difficult part is the generational change.  Look, in our short time in business I can tell you that we have served 4 generations in the same family.  The grandfather comes, as does the son, the grandson and the great-grandson.

What about fusion cooking?
I don’t believe in it.  The problem with fusion cooking, I say this as an immigrant: the young immigrant doesn’t miss his homeland; the old immigrant misses it because he has fewer opportunities to return.  If you were to transfer that to the kitchen, ultimately when you are older you miss the food you had when you were 8 or 9.  So you always return to the basics.

Where does innovation come in?
I think the following:  the simpler it is, the more difficult it is.

Can something be delicious with very little?
A dish shouldn’t have more than 3 elements; if it does, you are tergiversating (shifting reasons for deeds).

Do you miss Italian food?
I’ve been lucky—for a long time I’ve had someone who works for me at home who cooks like my mother.

What inspires you to create a new dish; do you have a laboratory?
No one invents anything, everything is already invented.  The only one who has invented something lately was the inventor of the microwave—it’s another form of cooking.  It’s your personality that you put on the plate.

Which dish on your menu is the most in demand and endures?
Carpaccio, chicken with lemon—I can’t take it off the menu, customers have been coming to eat it for 30 years, I just can’t remove it.  We introduced spaghetti with clams to Peru, during the Velasco regime; clams were being discarded at the time because no one knew either how to clean them or how to use them.  One day we made 35 portions of the dish and they were all sold.

What sets you apart from other chefs?
I am a “low profile” guy—I prefer to keep to my work.  Classics are always classic.  When we opened 30 years ago we were a star among Lima restaurants.  It’s a law of life, new standards are always emerging.

What about the quantity of cooking schools that now exist?
Not all people can be stars, some have to be workers.  The ones who remain workers will get frustrated.  At school they learn how to make 20 dishes, but when they are put on the line in a busy restaurant, they get frustrated.

Do you hire students from the schools?
I never have more than 2 apprentices.  I am obsessed with detail.  The greatest stimulus for Peruvian cooking is immigrants.

Which do you think is the best food in the world?
Each country has its idiosyncrasies.  Now, for example, Thai food is popular.  Each of us has to rescue our own food tradition and put it to use in the kitchen.  Peru is an ideal place for a cook because everything is available the year round, and that is very important in the kitchen.  For example, I make a dish with nettle butter, a wild plant that grows in Europe by the side of the road—here we get it all year.  When I took Sunday walks with my father he would gather plants, like chicory, and would make delicious dishes with them.  When I arrived in Lima in 1978 and asked for “ginger” I was told “go to the market and ask for kion”, which was being thrown away.

The boom has fostered pride, it’s making Peruvians feel proud.
I have another philosophy as an immigrant.  The greatest promoters of Peruvian food are the immigrants.  I stayed in Peru because I love it here.  The immigrants who came before me made money, not because they were more intelligent but because they were more disciplined; they had their homes, their work, their families but they were steadier, more disciplined..

Do you thank that because Peru was colonized it created an indifference, as though “no matter how much effort I make I’m going to be held down”?
A friend told me a story.  He comes to the restaurant frequently.  He went to Italy and went to a formal dinner at the house of some Italians.  The butler wasn’t Italian, and he thought he might be Filipino or Ecuadorian, and what was he served as the first course?  He was served causa (a Peruvian mashed potato dish).  At the end of the dinner he found out that the butler and his wife were Peruvians, and that she was the housekeeper who took care of the family.  That’s how I came to the conclusion that immigrants are the important ones; in this case it was the immigrants who introduced their food.  They are the stars of Peruvian cooking.

At Yanuq we receive many letters that we answer, many are from immigrants…
That’s why I said it is the immigrants who become the stars when there are none.  Italian food is known the world over, not because of the cooks.  Who doesn’t know pasta?  Peru was the seventh largest consumer of pasta in the world in 1980, at least during the years when pasta was supported by ENCI (Peruvian government agency) during the time of Velasco.  In the sierra, when there was a drought everyone ate pasta because with very little many can be fed.

When you travel, do you plan gourmet trips?I go to Flo
rence and at my hotel I ask an employee “Where do you eat?”  And that’s where I go; I learned this from one of my brothers who is a fireman, who went to eat where his friends went, and so did I.  I don’t want gourmet restaurants.  I’m from Salerno, south of Naples.  I have a friend who has an ice cream parlor, I go in the low season because he can spend time with me.  We went to eat someplace where there were no lights along the road.  We got to a little restaurant where they served food like beef cheeks in tomato sauce.  All they offer is home cooking.  It means they are returning to basics; age always takes us back to the basics.

Now we no longer eat offal—tongue, brains—like we used to…
At my restaurant we serve brains sautéed in brown butter with capers and parsley.  I never ate them because at home we didn’t eat them; if you are not given them as a child, then you won’t eat them as an adult.

What about Japanese food?
I eat it, but it doesn’t thrill me.  I have my preferred main dish which used to be salted prawns, but now I eat lobster.  I have 5 or 6 dishes that I like.  I don’t much care for Chinese food either, although there are some dishes I like.  I’m “open minded.”