QUITO

Emerging from the shadow of its gastronomic neighbours, Ecuador shines as an exciting hub for South American cuisine, with a new generation of chefs rediscovering the country’s incredible produce.

- Jamie Lafferty

While Quito is a superlative spot for an education in Ecuador’s blossoming culinary scene, I hadn’t expected to find myself actually spending the day at school. “For many years, this was a kindergarten,” says Santiago Rosero, one of the pioneers behind Fermento. Part-cooking cooperative, part bar, the project hosts a rotating lineup of chefs in the old classrooms, with tables and chairs arranged in the former playground.

Located in the not-so-trendy La Vicentina neighbourhood, at the front of the space there’s a small organic market, which leads through to the old school. I order an Ecuadorian IPA while we talk, with an artisanal blue cheeseburger on the way. A short walk away, in the Plaza José Navarro, 30 or so people are queuing up for street food: tripa mishqui (barbecued tripe) and deep-fried empanadas. The scene stands in sharp contrast to the cutting-edge, cool of Fermento. Is any of this for them? Santiago seems to know what I’m going to ask next.

“Look, I don’t want to be part of the gentrification here,” he says. “I want to be part of this neighbourhood. In the future, hopefully we’ll have food festivals to involve more of the local businesses. For now, everything is promoted boca a boca — by word of mouth only.”

Fermento would be a remarkable project in any city at any time, but it seems truly extraordinary in Quito — especially when Santiago tells me it was launched immediately after the city’s initial lockdown ended in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He’d never have chosen it this way, but the virus and the business are now inseparable.