Most Recent Posts

Danny Kou, the executive chef at La Mar, an upscale Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco, says it's a good time to be him.

Kou moved from Lima to the United States when he was 21. It was 2001, and back then, Peruvian cuisine was still unfamiliar in North America.

But in the last few years, there 's been an explosion of Peruvian restaurants in major cities all over the U.S. Last year, the American Restaurant Association named the cuisine a top food trend.

"I'll tell you, nowadays, every week or two, people come to me. They want to give me money to start another Peruvian restaurant," Kou says, with a chuckle. "I keep having to tell them, 'No, thank you, I am very happy where I am.' "

Kou says there's a simple explanation for why Peruvian cuisine has become so trendy: "It's just very, very good."

True, but it's also more complicated than that. Over the past decade, the Peruvian government has been making a very deliberate effort to popularize its cuisine worldwide. It's a strategy that a growing number of middle-income countries are adopting as they look to flex their muscles on the international stage.

"Think – if you're Peru, Mexico or Korea, you are not going to be major nuclear proliferators," says Johanna Mendelson-Forman, a policy expert on international conflict. "But maybe you can hope to become the world's No. 1 culinary destination."

The Salt

Mistura Food Fest Gives Peruvian Cuisine A Chance To Shine

Peru's dive into culinary diplomacy includes partnerships with the country's top culinary minds, such as international superstar chef Gaston Acurio, and food producers to promote Peruvian products like quinoa and pisco – a type of South American brandy.

In 2006, the country's Export and Tourism Promotion Board launched a campaign called "Peru Mucho Gusto" — a play on words that can mean "Peru, nice to meet you" and "Peru, full of flavor." The campaign has funded cookbooks, staged high-profile food festivals at home and abroad, and recognized exemplary Peruvian restaurants around the world.

And in 2011, the Organization of American States officially designated Peruvian food as part of the "cultural heritage of the Americas. Now the government is lobbying to win similar recognition from UNESCO as well.

i

The government of Peru is partnering with culinary stars — like celebrity chef Gaston Acurio, shown here in his restaurant Astrid & Gaston in Lima in 2014 — to promote Peruvian cuisine around the world. Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images

The government of Peru is partnering with culinary stars — like celebrity chef Gaston Acurio, shown here in his restaurant Astrid & Gaston in Lima in 2014 — to promote Peruvian cuisine around the world.

Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images

Other countries are trying different approaches to gaining gastro-prestige. You might remember that last year, Thailand built a robot to help critique and quality-control Thai food overseas.

South Korea has sometimes gotten a little too eager with its food messaging – which has included campaigns suggesting that eating Korean food increases sperm count and a series of bizarre advertisements.

Mexico and Taiwan have recently made efforts to raise their gastronomic profiles as well – promoting their cuisines at international food fairs, and launching campaigns to educate the world about their culinary traditions. Mexican cuisine won UNESCO recognition in 2010.

The strategy — which academics like to call "culinary nation branding" — was a topic of discussion this week during a conference on gastrodiplomacy at American University.

And it seems the approach really does work. According to the Peruvian embassy, 40 percent of all tourism to Peru in 2013 was motivated primarily by food. Gastronomic tourism generated about $700 million that year, the embassy says.

"The promotion of our cuisine is one way to promote our country," says Adriana Velarde, the head of public diplomacy at the Peruvian embassy in Washington, D.C.

It is also a way to change the conversation about a nation with a troubled past.

"Before, when people talked about Peru, they talked about terrorism," Velarde says – referencing the Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso. For nearly 20 years, the Maoist group led a campaign of bombings, assassinations and beheadings across the country — including a dramatic hostage standoff at the Japanese embassy in Lima that was televised around the world.

But as the Shining Path's influence waned by the early 2000s, Peru turned to its cuisine to tempt tourists to visit, and to redefine how the rest of the world sees it.

"We want our country to have a place in the international spotlight," Velarde says. "And one thing that sets us apart is our delicious food."

gastro tourism

peruvian cuisine

Korean food

gastrodiplomacy

Two Australians and a woman from the Philippines convicted nearly a decade ago of drug smuggling in Indonesia have been informed by authorities that their execution by firing squad is imminent.

"Indonesian authorities today [Saturday] advised Australian consular officials that the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be scheduled imminently at Nusa Kambangan prison in central Java," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement.

It is unclear whether an exact date has been set for Chan and Sukumaran — convicted of being ringleaders of the so-called "Bali Nine" heroin-smuggling ring —- as well as Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina maid who acted as a "mule." However, Indonesian law requires that inmates be given 72 hours notice of execution, which could mean they will be put to death as early as Tuesday.

As we reported on Friday, the two Australians are the sole Australian Bali Nine detainees who are facing a firing squad. Other Australians connected to the ring have received lengthy or life prison sentences. Two Nigerians, a Brazilian, a Frenchman and a Ghanaian iand one Indonesian in addition to Veloso are also on death row.

The group is being held on the island of Nusakambangan, known as "death island" because of its high percentage of inmates awaiting execution.

Foreign Minister Bishop said she would continue to pressure Jakarta to grant clemency to the Australians, but Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who took office last year, has followed his predecessors in maintaining a zero-tolerance policy for drug smuggling.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

"A French man on death row with Chan and Sukumaran won a temporary reprieve from the firing squad but any hope for the nine others has disappeared.

"Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told Fairfax Media the French Embassy was not among those summoned to discuss the imminent executions because Serge Atlaoui still had a legal case before the Administrative Court."

Bali Nine

Indonesia

Philippines

Australia

That question really drives the novel. When I was researching, I found just a little mention in an article about how in an X-ray of "Olympia," you can see that the face of the model has been scraped and reworked. And the person writing the article thought that it was reasonable to think that there had been a model before Victorine Meurent. When I read that, I saw all kinds of possibilities as a novelist. And what it really made me understand ... about the painting is something really unique happened when Manet met Victorine. She, I believe, is the reason he was able to complete "Olympia."

So I see her as being a very active muse. And whatever energy went back and forth between them in his studio must have been terrifically powerful. It really changed the way he painted. And as a result, art changed. And I find that very moving. I never liked the idea of the passive muse. And I think that she was, while not standing behind the canvas placing paint, she was nevertheless really active in what happened in those paintings.

Listen to the interview to hear Maureen Gibbon read an excerpt from her novel.

authors

historical fiction

painting

Paris

books

Visual Arts

It's been many years since I did my three semesters of college a cappella, but it remains a genre of performance for which I have enormous affection. In 2012, the arrival of Pitch Perfect meant that suddenly, I knew a lot more people who even knew what a college a cappella was. Throw in The Sing-Off on NBC, throw in Pentatonix, throw in the upcoming reality show on the Pop Network (which is called Sing It On, if you want to know what tone they're taking), and you've got a lot more attention on this extracurricular than there's been in the past.

Not all a cappella involves competition by any means (mine didn't), but last weekend, I was in New York for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. I got to see some of the best groups in the country perform, plus a couple of very talented high school groups to make those in the audience feel particularly intimidated.

i

The SoCal VoCals were the winners of the 2015 National Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. Joe Martinez Photography hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Martinez Photography

The SoCal VoCals were the winners of the 2015 National Championship of Collegiate A Cappella.

Joe Martinez Photography

Four of the eight competing groups spent time chatting with me (including the Northeastern University Nor'easters, who don't appear in the story but who are the one of these teams followed on Sing It On, so you'll have plenty of chances to get to know them), and I met some of the fans who come from far away to see the show. (I talked to two families who literally came to the ICCAs after just Googling a cappella competitions because they liked some combination of The Sing-Off, Pitch Perfect and Glee.)

In the story, you'll get to hear them sing, you'll hear some great reflections on the friends you make when you work really hard on a common goal, and you may be surprised how much work goes into creating an arrangement for a group to sing in the first place.