Cooking up a business cluster

ON A warm summer morning earlier this month, dozens of building workers were putting the finishing touches to the restoration of Casa Moreyra, a 17th-century colonial manor house in San Isidro, the business district of Lima, Peru’s capital. With an investment of $6m, Casa Moreyra is the new home of Astrid y Gastón, a restaurant ranked 14th in the world by Restaurant magazine. The more or less explicit goal of Gastón Acurio, its chef-proprietor, as he moves to these grand premises, is to turn Astrid y Gastón into the world’s leading restaurant.

Mr Acurio is the cheerleader for the Peruvian gastronomic revolution, as well as its foremost entrepreneur. Over the past two decades he has set up 37 restaurants in 11 countries with total annual sales of more than $100m, each showcasing different kinds of Peruvian food, from ceviche to Italo-Peruvian fusion. But his culinary empire is not an isolated fluke. No fewer than seven of the leading 15 gourmet eateries in Latin America are in Lima, according to Restaurant.