99AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019 – DESTINASIAN.COMsays. “Today it could be rose, the next, it’s black or green.”
By this point, my mood is pointing me toward food, so I head
back down the hill for a late lunch at Z-Food, a four-year-old pesca-
deria that trumpets the importance of fish as a staple of Ecuador-
ian cuisine. It’s part of the Z Restaurants group founded by chef/
owner David Picco, whose fine diner Zazu—where I’ll gorge myself
that night on prawn-and-plantain cazuela (stew), poached egg in
veal jus, and deeply flavorful guinea pig ravioli—is the only Relais &
Châteaux restaurant in the country.
The atmosphere at Z-Food is festive. Every patio table is filled
with patrons sipping wine and nibbling bites of fried fish or grilled
octopus. Inside, a group of revelers spontaneously burst into dance
around the open dining room. And well they should: the food is that
good. My ceviche selection includes a creamy avocado loaded with
ribbons of stone crab, smoked shrimp in a sweet, rich tomato salsa,
and sea bass with velvety peanut undertones, all made with seafood
bought directly from small-scale fishermen and cooperatives.
I return to Bellavista the next day for a meal at Somos, a place
so new they are still in the throes of opening. “We like to say we
are Ecuadorian-born, but globally inspired,” Alejandra Espinoza—
a Paris-trained chef whose résumé includes stints at top kitchens
in France and the United States—tells me of her restaurant, which
she runs with her American husband Signo Uddenberg. “We want
to make food that’s accessible to locals, using local ingredients with
international techniques.”
The space is a mid-century modernist’s dream, filled with decor
from around the country: woven lamps from the coastal city of
Esmeraldas, white-oak chairs by Guayaquil designer Pedro Bahr, a
giant mural courtesy of Quito-born street artist Apitatán. But it is
Espinoza’s imaginative menu of reinterpreted Ecuadorian classics
and globally inspired plates that ensures Somos will be a rising star
in the city’s culinary firmament. Topped with zesty tomato sauce
and chopped cilantro, my brick oven–baked guaguas flatbreads are
delicious, as is a gazpiche—a cross between gazpacho and ceviche—
of poached shrimp resting in smoky watermelon juice.
Back at Casa Gangotena, Díaz the concierge also recommends the
tasting menu at Urko Cocina Local, where chef Daniel Maldonado
has been at the forefront of contemporary Ecuadorian cuisine since
he opened the restaurant in 2015. In Urko’s upstairs dining room, I
sit down for a seven-course dinner based on the ancient astral cycles
—raymis—that once defined the Andean agricultural calendar: har-
vest, fertility, sowing, and flowering. From the Andes through the
Amazon and even the Galápagos (where Maldonado operates an-
other restaurant), it’s a gastronomic journey through Ecuador that
makes good use of the herbs and vegetables grown in Urko’s roof-
top garden. There’s a complex, heartening llama-bone broth soup,
and cocolon—scorched rice that has stuck to the bottom of a pan—
dashed with cacao nibs in a pork broth and paired with a sweet taxo
juice finisher. Mushrooms rest in a green-tea kombucha opposite
a tart apple cocktail; a flaky fish coated in a sourdough tempura