Chef Mario Castrellón is using ingredients native to the region in his fine dining menus, making sure they’re sustainably sourced from indigenous farmers
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- From forest to table: fine dining gets an indigenous twist – in pictures
At a fine dining restaurant in Panama City, customers are tucking into kalalu, a tropical fern with an earthy flavour, blanched like an asparagus, and brushed with olive oil and grilled. Next on the menu; boda, a palm flower that looks and tastes like baby corn, pickled and wrapped in banana leaf tamale-style.
From wild red rice grown in the isolated Darién province, to the flor eléctrica herb on the slopes of the country’s tallest volcano, unusual rainforest plants are a critical part of the menu for 33-year-old Panamanian chef and restaurateur Mario Castrellón. His restaurant Maito has undertaken the mission of exploring Panamanian biodiversity, while also bringing indigenous and traditional ingredients to the fine dining scene. While Panama City’s most popular restaurants were serving Italian pastas and Peruvian ceviches, Castrellón has been incorporating pixbae, a starchy peach palm fruit, and ñame, a root vegetable, into his menu at Maito.
The indigenous people are always left behind or looked down upon
Related: If you want to tackle carbon emissions let indigenous people control their land
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