Leo Espinosa is stirring a stew in a pot when she hears something in the distance that distracts her. The sound is almost imperceptible. The chef stops what she is doing and approaches a swinging door. He observes her with the closeness of a door forensics expert and rules: “she is damaged.” She makes a diagnosis in a matter of seconds: the hinges are poorly greased and produce a high-pitched sound. For a few seconds, with her hand on her chin, she watches the cooks at her Leo restaurant in Bogotá come and go nonchalantly, throwing her forward with one hand without waiting for him to return to her place. So, she asks everyone to pay attention to her. The woman able to detect a wrinkle in the shirt of one of her waiters from 20 meters away opens the door with her right hand and gently closes it with her left. She repeats the gesture four times with a beautiful choreography of hands and gestures. “The door doesn’t open,” she says out loud. “You can’t treat things badly. Guys, did you hear me?”
—Hey, chef! —their workers respond in chorus.
Leonor Espinosa (Cartagena de Indias, 60 years old), chosen in 2022 as the best chef in the world by the British list The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, orders the bills from largest to smallest in her wallet. The apron that she has been wearing for four days does not have a single stain. If she sees a hair on the floor she stops what she is doing and removes it, as if the future of the kitchen world were at stake. She gets angry if her employees leave the bathroom dirty or her apron hanging poorly on the hangers. The heat rises if someone puts a pot on the fire and then doesn’t worry. “The way you take care of your environment is related to success. One becomes meticulous,” she Espinosa will say in a while with a coffee in her hand, in privacy.
But before getting there, we must remember that it is Monday, a day in which the workers arrive as confused as the doors. It has only been a few moments since Leo entered the restaurant and she has already said in alarm that there is dust and dirt everywhere (“everything must be spotless, please”). The chef must have had X-rays because at a glance everything looks neat. A client from the weekend wrote a very complimentary review on the website, but added a comment that will keep her busy for the next two hours: the lady noticed that, for a few thousandths of a second, it was difficult for her to tear off the skin of a quail with her teeth. . Leo makes several phone calls until he finds the supplier, to whom he says as soon as he picks up: “I’m your headache.”
Espinosa is a Caribbean woman who in the Cartagena de Indias of the seventies danced champeta, enjoyed boxing fights and the bat of Abel Leal, a legendary Colombian baseball player. She overindulged in drug use, which alarmed her parents, but she vehemently rejected all treatments, according to what she says in her book What the Cauldron Tells. She was convinced that she was not a junkie and that she could get out on her own. At the end of the nineties she studied fine arts at the school of fine arts. Her first exhibition was cult objects, an installation in which he immersed himself in the fetishism of shoes. Then she prepared Intringulis, she decided to dress as a man and go to film in the bathrooms of a porn movie theater that smelled of sweat. He walked down the street with a fake mustache and tight pants in which you could sense a plastic penis at the fly level.
Around the age of 40, the time came for him to choose between cooking and art. He chose the stove because it was easier for him to make money, and at that time he had to pay for his only daughter to go to college. But that didn’t mean abandoning his adventurous spirit. He has traveled through Colombia collecting stories and recipes and then experimenting with them in the kitchen, respecting his origin. He wanted to know what people eat and why. Along the way he has encountered legends such as the vampire woman, dishes such as mulata stroller (sancocho), quemapata (goat tripe), places where people cast the evil eye and aphrodisiac fish. “I haven’t stopped being an artist,” she says in the middle of her restaurant, where the cooks are busy getting the lunch service ready.
Leo has his hands full and that’s why they have to give him a taste of a sauce by holding the spoon in the air: “It’s pasty. It has to look thick, but not pasty.” Now they bring him to try a stew: “He lacks power, dad.” Leo has a snake tattooed between his fingers and the face of his daughter Laura stamped on his back. He rolls up his sleeves and begins to prepare a loose piangua stew, a very traditional dish from the Colombian Pacific. “Basil, please. Give me more onion, chili, paprika, I’ll do it faster. He lacks strength, he lacks strength.” “This happens sometimes,” he explains while stirring with a spatula. “I have to fix things. The most difficult thing is to have a balance of the senses to ensure that it is always the same. That is the biggest challenge a chef can have.”
Praise rains down on Espinosa. But they don’t get her to be mean to her contemporaries. She is fascinated by the lucidity, the genius of Andoni Luis Aduriz and “his brain” of her. She pines for Alchemist’s Rasmus Munk. She is surprised by the meticulousness, the beauty of the dishes and the balance of a cook like Clare Smyth. She values the rest of Joan Roca’s food. And the visual art of Peruvian Virgilio Martínez, whose restaurant, Central, was recently proclaimed the best restaurant in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. For the first time in history, a restaurant from Latin America has been chosen. Her work is not far behind: the responsibility of making Colombian cuisine known to the world rests on her shoulders, not as codified as Mexican or Peruvian cuisine.
Espinosa is afraid of getting old, she doesn’t get along well with death. And he has not found true love, only the one he professes to his daughter, to whom he dedicates “I love you” in another tattoo.
—He has achieved awards, recognition, praise. What makes you come to the restaurant with the same discipline every day?
—Be an artist, continue my work. I was educated in perfection, in my maternal family we are rigorous.
—Like when opening a door, to give an example.
-Exact.
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