Martin Morales on authenticity, why flavour is king and preserving traditions

With a Peruvian mother and an English father who worked for an American company in Peru, Martin’s family were threatened by guerrillas and forced to leave with his father at the age of 11 and move to Leicestershire.

After working at Apple and Disney and DJing, Morales realised his dream of opening his own Peruvian restaurant and kickstarted a Peruvian food revolution in the UK. After opening Ceviche Soho, next came the Old Street branch, followed by Andina in Shoreditch and now the city’s first Peruvian bakery – Andina Panaderia – in Notting Hill, with an adjacent cafe, Andina Picanteria, which will both pay homage to the female Andean chefs who have inspired Morales.

You’re often referred to as an ambassador of Peruvian food and arts – do you think that’s a fair description of you?

Well, I just think our country has so much to offer that people don’t know about and I try and specialise in the areas I’m passionate about, which happen to be food and drink and sometimes art and music. I’m always conscious about the way culture and traditions are represented and I believe that they need to evolve to move forward, but there’s also an essence and a legacy that needs to be respected. I always say my work is like a mission to ensure our traditions are respected and presented in the right way, as I’ve seen a lot of exploitation of culture over the years, where it’s been watered down and treated haphazardly.

How has Latin American food regained its culture?

Supposedly Mexican food about 20 years ago, well what was called Mexican food, was more influenced by Tex-Mex (a fusion of Mexican and American food) and tasted like neither of them. It was washed down by very cheap tequila and pumped up with chilli so that it was just a money making exercise. Now, Mexican food has grown up and really been represented beautifully by many different people at different levels of entry in terms of price point.

How did you feel when you had to leave Peru?

When my parents separated when I was 11, I came here with my father and my mother stayed there and it was heartbreaking. I was almost wrenched out of my own country, I felt. But I was extremely grateful to have been given the chance to come and live in England, because of safety. Actually at the time I was really excited about living in a cooler country, but not so much after a winter we’ve just had. At the time, Peru was a very dangerous place, but now it’s an extremely safe place.

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Was there anywhere to get Peruvian food in Leicestershire when you first moved there in the 1980s?

The reason I’m doing what I’m doing is because of desperation and pain after I missed my country so much – my food and my music. In Leicester, where I fist landed, there was a little record shop that had the smallest world music section, where I found music from the salsa era, and those couple of records kept me alive for several years. As well as the trips back to Peru, where I could eat the food that I loved and got the recipes from my aunts and brought them back to the UK to treat my friends.

As you began your career successfully in the music industry, why did you move into food?

When I was growing up I was DJing and cooking for friends and I used to run a club night at university called Club Kitchen, where I used to DJ and cook at the same time. I was a record collector and vinyl junkie, but also a recipe collector and I liked food from different parts of the world. After university I worked for a record label, and at university I worked in hospitality – as a commis chef and bar manager – so the two things were very close from the beginning.

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How did you start your own restaurant?

About eight years ago, I was restless and working for a big company and just thinking, “I love my food, I love cooking, it’s been my dream for 20 years to start my own restaurant, Peru is not represented here, if I don’t do it, someone else will.” I wanted to make sure it was done correctly and authentically. I knew the time was right and thought, “let’s do this”. So I started doing supper clubs at my house, and people like Jose Pizarro came along and famous food bloggers also came down and they were all so hugely encouraging. A year later we couldn’t raise the money as everyone thought I was crazy – so we sold our house and then we opened Ceviche Soho.

What was the reception like when you opened your first restaurant in London?

We were the first restaurant of its kind to open and I guess by that time, people were following me and my blog and on Twitter. We’ve been full since we’ve been open – people love that little restaurant in Soho. We created a neighbourhood place and thought a lot about what would be great for London without imposing a cuisine, and doing it in a stylish way. A restaurant is not just about the food, or the drinks – it’s also about atmosphere and those things continue to be an important element of our work, so the response was fabulous. I watch Peruvians come in and cry because some of them haven’t eaten in a Peruvian restaurant for many years after being away for so long. So it’s very rewarding.

What can people expect from the bakery and the cafe and how will it differ from your other restaurants?

It’s the first Peruvian bakery outside of Peru, as far as I know! It’s a bakery, cafe and takeaway. So you can grab and go or sit in and eat. So almost two in one, but both are quite small. The essence is around artisan, slow fermented breads and pastries. I’ve tried to look deeply at tradition, remember what I knew form my childhood and look at local bakers and take inspiration from traditional breads and pastries. There’s also cookies, snacks, hot bowls – different type of stews, quinoa, salads, corn cake and Andean granola.

How do you think the western obsession with superfoods like quinoa is affecting people in the Andes?

All people in the Andes want, and my grandmother was one of those people, is consistency, to earn a living and live a peaceful and healthy life. We in the West create the trends and the demand. The case of quinoa was that something that was used as chicken feed for many years in some countries – not in Peru – has now become so popular. For a moment, it increased the price of quinoa very strongly and then suddenly everyone wants to produce quinoa, so it’s produced in China, the UK, India and now it’s very mass produced. It’s created absolute oversupply and the price in quinoa dropped. Sadly now there are now farmers suffering as their crop is not able to sell, so like anything you have to be careful where you source it from, it should be organic, from a sustainable source and be fair trade.

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How do you ensure your ingredients are sustainably sourced?

My priority from the very beginning was to source as much as I can from the UK and local sources and farmers, because I care about my carbon footprint – I want authenticity but not at any cost and logistically it’s not so easy to source from Peru. Only about 7 per cent of our produce comes from Peru, that includes our pisco, different types of chillies, corn and quinoa. The other 93 per cent is local. And a result of that we won best sustainable restaurant of the year, as they found it quite incredible that we are a restaurant serving food somewhere else and achieve it even with those measures that we place on ourselves.

How much has the food changed in Lima since you lived there as a child?

It’s changed enormously, just like London has and it’s known as the gastronomical capital of the Americas and has won that award four times in a row. Lots of the fine dining chefs used to look towards Paris and New York, they now look towards the ingredients that are in our countries. The chefs there have started to look to traditional cooking, which is where my focus has been. In Peru, you can’t fool a Peruvian about what they are eating. We are obsessed about food more than sex, more than politics, more than football and we talk about it even more. We’ve been critics of food long before MasterChef ever existed.

How much of an inspiration were your aunts in your cooking?

My aunts and my grandmother were a huge inspiration. The women cooks of the Andes are called picanterias, and they run their kitchens and family-run restaurants and they are the keepers of Andean dishes and traditions. They are the real unsung heroes of Peruvian food. There’s a lot of Lima-based men who’ve had fine dining educations around the world, but these ladies haven’t and their food is exquisite. For me, that’s where the flavour, soul and tradition lies. And for me, they are the inspiration. It’s not led by money, or ego, it’s led by practicality and wanting to do a proper business

Andina Bakery is now open