The Food of Ecuador: From Jungle Guesthouses to Quito Fine Dining

Zazu in Quito was recommended by every review platform that had noticed it, which is sometimes a warning sign and in this case was not. The restaurant occupies a converted house in one of the better residential neighbourhoods, the kind of space where the architecture does some of the work and the kitchen does the rest. The menu is Ecuadorian fusion in the sense that it begins with local ingredients and applies techniques from elsewhere rather than importing ingredients and calling them local, which is the version of fusion that tends to produce interesting results. Ceviche in Ecuador is made with the acid from lemon juice chemically cooking the seafood rather than applying heat, which is one of those techniques that sounds alarming until you eat it, at which point it sounds simply correct. The swordfish version was excellent for several bites and then became what fish cooked entirely in acid becomes over a full portion, which is to say a little much. The octopus with chorizo was the better dish: the char on the octopus, the smokiness of the chorizo, textures working against each other in the way that good combinations do.

Ecuador does not have a significant wine industry, which is partly altitude and partly climate and partly the particular direction of agricultural investment in a country whose most successful exports have historically been bananas, cut flowers, cacao, and oil rather than grapes. Chilean wine fills the gap in most Ecuadorian restaurants at mid-range prices, and Chilean wine is very good, so this is not a hardship. The dessert trolley at Zazu contained a crème brûlée in three flavours, coconut, pistachio, and vanilla, each on its own base, the texture correct and the flavours genuinely distinct. It was the best dessert of the South America leg of the trip, which is a reasonable metric for a restaurant claiming to represent Ecuadorian fine dining.

The food at the jungle guesthouse, taken at the Anakonda’s dining table with the river visible through the windows, was prepared by a chef working with what arrives by boat and what the forest provides, which produces a menu constrained by supply but disciplined by the constraint into a clarity that more resourced kitchens sometimes lack. River fish cooked simply, fresh vegetables, rice in the way that rice is always correct when everything else on the plate is strong-flavoured. Eating well in the middle of the Amazon is a small miracle repeated three times a day for five days, and the kitchen managed it without visible effort.