The Cusco Restaurants Project

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For us at Andean Lodges, it’s very important to ensure the complete full satisfaction of our guests. We’re also dedicated to offering our colleagues from the local native communities of Chillca and Osefina important opportunities for developing their professional skills in the best possible ways. Therefore, we initiated a joint project with Cusco Restaurants in which eight of our chefs have had the opportunity to learn and develop their culinary skills in high quality restaurants.

Cusco Restaurants consists of eight restaurants with very high quality standards. They also support the development of small-scale family farming in high-Andean native communities. The communities supply the restaurants with the freshest highest-quality ingredients from the region’s native food products. Thus, Cusco Restaurant offers some of the best dishes and culinary delights found anywhere, in fusion styles of Peruvian cuisine.
For this project we sent four of our chefs at the beginning of March 2018 to Cusco, to train and work for two weeks at the different Cusco Restaurants establishments. In mid-March, four more chefs came to Cusco to improve their culinary skills and techniques, and to learn to prepare new dishes. Through the professional development of our chefs we want to guarantee the best dining experiences and improved food preparation services for our guests, while at the same time our chefs benefit from such experiences.
Who else but our chefs could say whether this experience was well worth it?
So, we talked to them before and after their two weeks of training in the restaurants.
Our chefs are really happy about having had the opportunity to learn at Cusco Restaurants. During the interviews the chefs told us that they’re very thankful to Andean Lodges for offering them a chance to further develop their culinary skills. The chefs told us that, “learning is always good”, and especially so from different experts in diverse establishments. They’re really looking forward to more exchanges with Cusco Restaurants, and hope to learn a lot more. For example, they practiced different preparation techniques, learned about which foods are favored by tourists, along with values such as mutual respect and responsibility in a work environment, and methods for improving hygiene. Overall, they’d like to offer better and different dishes at the lodges, as well as creating future opportunities for themselves.
We also wanted to know specifically what our chefs learned during their two weeks with Cusco Restaurants, so we asked them that following their two weeks of training.
They told us what they learned; such as, how to cut different ingredients correctly and how to prepare them in the best possible ways. For example, it doesn’t work to toss potatoes into hot oil without knowing the temperature; the result could be potatoes that are raw inside and scorched outside. Learning about security in the kitchen also played a big roll, for example, not wearing jewelry (rings, watches, chains) because of higher risk of accidents. It’s also interesting that they learned to determine the cooking point of meat or fish without aids like thermometers. Each of them told us that the experience was excellent, but also demanding, and they would all like to continue with this project. The chefs said that one never stops learning, and they all want to learn more.
In sum, they’re looking forward to sharing their new experiences and dishes with the guests, and they’ve all greatly benefited from their two weeks with Cusco Restaurants.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]