SUMMUM

Everything has a beginning and end in our beautiful land, with its ability to offer up the most diverse, delicious, and cherished of fruits. With that in mind, SUMMUM 2024 is inspired by Origins: those of the age-old crops that mark the beginning of Peru’s incredible culinary culture.

Of course, our salts, fruits, flowers, and native herbs were quick to generously welcome the seeds that have arrived in our land over the years. Now united as one, they have created an intermingling that is the source of our cuisine’s variety.

Many of our native crops have been lost to memory, however, while others grow only in far-flung villages. Because of this, SUMMUM works hard every year to recognize the research done by centers such as Mater Iniciativa, which sensitize and educate others on how to preserve our crops; or the work of the INIA, a public institute whose research area promotes the use of genetic resources and seed production.

We are firm believers in celebrating Peruvian farmers as a way to help our cuisine conquer palates on the international stage. As such, SUMMUM’s organizers also work to support applications for appellations of origin. This year, we are awarding our special recognition for an iconic product to Maras salt, an Andean wonder that is cared for by a community who has harvested it for the last 600 years using a technique passed down from generation to generation.

We are also giving a special award to the steadfast farmer Yudy Cisneros, one of the driving forces behind Aspagro, a cooperative of 132 organic quinoa producers in Sachabamba, Ayacucho, where this native product is sowed following the principles of sustainability that our future requires.

Our farmers and producers are well-deserving of the Peruvian public’s grateful applause. Ours is a soil strengthened by its roots. With a geography in constant transformation, from the mangrove swamps of Tumbes to the deserts of Tacna, from the long Peruvian coastline to the foothills of the Andes, not to mention the inexhaustible, fertile Amazon jungle, these products would not reach tables throughout Peru without the firm hand and self-sacrifice of those who tend our fields.

In these pages, we honor all those Peruvians who plant and cook, offering the world flavor, color, and love.

When we started doing the SUMMUM awards in 2007, Peru was not yet a major destination on the world’s culinary map, although those who were paying close attention had already noticed something big was cooking in Peru. In 2013, after Astrid & Gastón took first place on the list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants, the general public started to become aware of this process, although it wasn’t until 2016 that cuisine earned the top spot in Ipsos’ annual Peruvian public opinion poll regarding the greatest sources of national pride. Ever since then, it has remained number one in the ranking. The crowning achievement would come with Central’s recognition as the best restaurant in the world in 2023, according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Ipsos has accompanied SUMMUM in the process of identifying and recognizing the country’s best chefs and restaurants using a bias-proof methodology. To achieve this, Ipsos consults a group of 5,000 carefully chosen connoisseurs and frequent restaurant-goers, who are sent a survey. This year, 1,042 people responded between May and June, an excellent sample for this methodology.

Unlike online public voting processes, the Ipsos panel is by invitation only and no one can vote more than once. Respondents are required to have visited restaurants specializing in a specific style of cuisine at least three times in the last year in order to vote for that category. The methodology’s rigorousness allows us to establish rankings for each category, rather than simply picking a winner.

SUMMUM is thus an acknowledgement of our chefs’ creativity and hard work, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit and teamwork of the managers, employees, and suppliers of thousands of restaurants who have made Peruvian cuisine a source of national pride and turned Peru into a culinary tourism destination that continues to earn the world’s esteem.