New Worlder

Around 15 years ago, while I was already deeply immersed in the ancestral foodways of Latin America, I started to wonder about the native foods of where I grew up in the U.S. Were there any cooks or scholars out there, indigenous or otherwise, thinking about the ingredients that were ushered out of North America’s varied landscapes? I did a simple web search and that’s how I first encountered Nephi Craig. It was a simple Blogspot page called Apaches in the Kitchen.

Neko San in Providencia. Photo: Nicholas Gill. Santiago, Chile continues to surprise me. Countless intriguing new restaurant concepts open every year and rarely do they seem to be following any specific trend other than the creative whims or passions of the chef or restauranteur behind them. There’s a colossal new gastronomic skyscraper within a central transportation hub that is shifting Santiago’s center of gravity, while top restaurants with loyal followings are moving to better locations.

“You’ll see, it’s not funny,” says Consuleo Poblete, who founded Ruta de los Abastos, a fantastic network of rural culinary projects in the O’Higgins Region, of the town of Lolol in the Colchagua Valley. Somehow in the 20 plus years I’ve spent traveling around Chile I had never heard of this community. I would remember a name like Lolol. Regardless, I didn’t believe Poblete.

Bolivia, Bella Vista: Quinoa lies on a playing field of the small village before its processing. Quinoa is considered extremely hardy and grows even under extreme climatic conditions. Nevertheless, farmers in the region of the Uyuni and Coipasa salt lakes think the grain did not grow so well in 2022 because of the climate. Photo: Radoslaw Czajkowski/picture alliance via Getty Images.

All photos by Nicholas Gill. “The door has to face the direction where the morning rays of Antü come up and bring energy,” says Doña Rosario Colipi, using the Mapudungun word for the spirit of the sun. Her ruka, an elliptical-shaped structure where she spends a good part of her day, is an adapted one.

Winestand Waltz, Ebisu. Photo: Nicholas Gill. A popular manga series – and, more recently a hit show on Apple TV+ – helped transform Tokyo into the most interesting place in the world to drink wine, and not just for the famous grand crus that inspired this story in the first place. Ducking out of the rain, down a flight of winding stairs in an alleyway in Akasaka, I find a black door with a note on it, asking those entering to not wear excessive perfume.

Carpaccio de pirarucu at Casa do Saulo Tapajós. Photo: Nicholas Gill. Roughly halfway between Manaus and Belém, at the confluence of the Amazon and the Tapajós Rivers, Santarém, Brazil feels harder to be enchanted with than those other large cities at first glance.

The official end of Michelin's green stars and maybe the stars in Argentina, plus openings in Venezuela/CDMX/Buenos Aires/Boston/Denver/Seattle & more. An award winner holds a Green Star for sustainable cooking on stage during the Michelin Stars 2024 award ceremony for German restaurants at the Chamber of Commerce. Photo by Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images.

The poetic deviation from standard New Haven-style pizzas. A New Haven-style white clam pie. Photo: Nicholas Gill. Late last year, in between trips to the Amazon Rainforest, I attended the inauguration of the Connecticut Pizza Trail. There was an entire multi-day press event around it, full of speeches by politicians and countless opportunities for Connecticut influencers posing in front of fake Banksy pizza art with pizza negronis.

Chañar Mole at Ephedra outside of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Photo: Nicholas Gill. Sergio Armella has only tried one mole in his life. He tasted that mole at a restaurant in Santiago. It wasn’t even from a Mexican restaurant. Yet, it piqued his curiosity enough to start reading about mole and all the different ways it can be made.