This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“Gastronomy or conservation working alone doesn’t make sense any more. But these two working together: this is the way.” So says Rodrigo Pacheco, who, over the past decade, working with his wife and business partner, Dayra Reyes, has transformed several deteriorated parcels of land on the rural coast of Ecuador’s Manabí province into thriving habitats for wildlife and produce such as cocoa, soursop and yucca. These BCBs (Bosques Comestibles Biodiversos, which translates as ‘biodiverse, edible forests’) supply their 10-year-old restaurant, Bocavaldivia, and its neighbouring eco-hotel, Tanusas, with around 150 species of fruit, vegetable and herb.
At the 12-seat, open-air restaurant, Pacheco serves his creations on sustainably sourced tableware. Either carved from wood and seeds or made by the chef himself from clay dug on site, the bowls and spoons pay homage to pre-Hispanic traditions. And in celebration of Ecuador’s vast biodiversity, all ingredients are native. Desserts include melted cocoa with oatmeal crisps, presented in halved cocoa shells and eaten with spoons carved from the hard-shell fruit of a calabash tree.
The restaurant was the catalyst for a bioeconomy project that connects gastronomy and conservation with agriculture, education, science, tourism and local Indigenous communities such as the Chola-Montuvia, from which Pacheco sources seafood. His approach to conservation is productive and collaborative, not just to preserve. As such, Indigenous communities are consulted for their knowledge, land is often rewilded and ecosystems regenerated for food production, education and scientific research.
“We want to create opportunities for traditional agricultural communities,” says Pacheco, who trains young Indigenous people in hospitality, permaculture and fishing. His work supports 150 local families, plus more across Ecuador. “Gastronomy hasn’t been paying attention to them because restaurants import products that come in a can.”
In 2022, after his self-funded conservation project at Bocavaldivia and Tanusas reached 301 acres, Pacheco partnered with private nature reserves that were keen to be part of his BCB. These included a 14,000-acre cloud forest in Maquipucuna. Under Bocavaldivia’s stewardship, the forests supply restaurants with part of their harvest. Landowners create culinary initiatives based on what’s grown, learning how to engage tourists in activities that connect nature and gastronomy. Pacheco’s team of scientists also document wildlife, including Maquipucuna’s spectacled bear, with cameras and drones, cataloguing plants and measuring carbon capture.
After Pacheco brought in investors to grow the project, the BCB ballooned to 85,000 acres in just one month. “This isn’t just a restaurant,” he explains. “We’re creating a healthy economy from forest plants.”
But ultimately, it’s Pacheco’s food that draws diners to Ecuador’s backcountry, although guests leave with more than just a full belly. From plucking sapote fruit off a mamey tree to fishing in the pond where the chef raises river lobster, shrimp, prawn and tilapia, the hands-on educational experiences he offers are intended to drive respect for the natural world and its bounty.
Pacheco is often found in the forest, knife in hand. During a visit to El Abrazo, a 53-acre tract of cloud forest a short drive inland from Bocavaldivia, he offers me his machete to harvest bananas. “The first knife you should have in your hand as a chef is a machete because that means you’re cultivating something,” he says. “Chefs think they’ve reached a point of mastery, but they’ve never dug a cassava out of the earth. They know how to cook it, but that’s only half of the process. The cycle of life of that cassava is a whole universe to discover.”
It’s an insight into ingredients that feeds Pacheco’s innovation. Herbs like chillangua (wild coriander) top dishes such as vapour-cooked sea snail ceviche with chicharrón (fried pork rind), avocado and peanut ‘caviar’.
“We’re inspired by Ecuador’s traditional dishes, but we transform them,” says the chef. Many dishes are cooked on a manabita oven. Built of mud and wood, it dates back to the Valdivia culture, one of the Americas’ oldest settled civilisations — native to Ecuador for nearly 2,000 years, from 3500 BCE.
The chef’s love of ancestral tradition, nature and cooking began with his mother and grandmother. “They taught me how to love and respect food and the earth, how to grow food and how valuable it is to prepare food at home — your bread and juices,” he says. “They’re great masters for me until this day.”
Pacheco studied hotel and restaurant management in Chile before attending culinary school at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon. And it was in rural Southern France, during his final internship that he found another mentor in chef Michel Bras, whose garden supplied his three-Michelin-star restaurant. “We bonded because he was also fascinated with nature, flowers and plants,” he says. “That experience gave me a push to connect high-end gastronomy with nature.”In 2020, Pacheco’s work was recognised by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Still eager to create new alliances, last September he opened Foresta, a fine dining restaurant in Quito. “I wanted to reach more people, to spread the message in a bigger way, so I came to the city.”
Foresta’s seasonal menu blends the regional cuisines of Ecuador — a plate of Amazonian insects may also feature tamarillo (an egg-shaped fruit) from the highlands and papaya from the coast. Other dishes use fruit from endangered tree species, thus creating a demand that supports the communities that cultivate them, in turn protecting the trees. A bright-pink espumilla (a meringue dessert) gets its cheerful colour from motilón, a dark-red, olive-size fruit with an intense flavour.
To supply Foresta, Pacheco planted an acre of crops in Quito. But bringing the forest to Ecuador’s capital isn’t ambitious enough. Also on his agenda: a biological corridor from the Galápagos Islands through the Amazon rainforest to Peru, serving as both a food forest and a cultural conduit for knowledge sharing.
“My children will say that grandpa left something for them that they need to take care of. What can be better than having a food forest with water, plants and animals?” he asks.
Signature dishes
1. Espumilla
One of Quito’s most popular street foods, espumilla (above) is a cream meringue dessert made from egg whites, sugar and fruit pulp. Pacheco prepares his version with ripe motilón (an endangered fruit species) punctuated with crumbs made of achira (arrowroot) flour and garnished with flowers and fresh mint. The pink dessert is served in a toasted cone made from máchica flour.
2. Tender squid guatita
Pacheco’s contemporary take on guatita, Ecuador’s traditional beef tripe stew, swaps offal for thinly sliced squid, whose black ink gives the roasted peanut sauce its dark colour. This is combined with a medley of roasted native potatoes accompanied by thin potato strips — fried for a touch of crunchiness — wild oregano and a foam made from chillangua, a native wild coriander.
3. Smoked oyster tart
For this highly sustainable creation, served at Bocavaldivia, wild rock oysters from the nearby Manabí coast are slowly smoked over wood, on a traditional manabita clay oven, then placed inside a crunchy plantain shell under a layer of tamarind-barbecue jelly topped with fresh onion flowers. Pacheco uses local plants and plantains cultivated in his Puerto Cayo forest.
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