Menu
The cooks who carry Venezuelan flavors across the world — and the ones who never left.
In-Country MasterAuthor — Mi cocina, a la manera de Caracas · Caracas, Venezuela
Armando Scannone (1922–2021) wrote the most important cookbook in Venezuelan history. 'Mi cocina, a la manera de Caracas' (1982) measured, standardized and documented the recipes that define Caracas cuisine. Every working Venezuelan chef in 2026 — at home or abroad — has, somewhere on a shelf, a Scannone. The Academia Venezolana de Gastronomia named its highest annual chef award in his honor.
In-Country MasterAlto · Caracas, Venezuela
Carlos Garcia trained at El Bulli and El Celler de Can Roca, then did what almost nobody does — he went home. Alto in Caracas has been the country's flagship restaurant for nearly two decades, surviving economic collapse, and Garcia has served over 200,000 charity meals along the way.
In-Country MasterLeal Restaurante · Caracas, Venezuela
James Beard semifinalist Edgar Leal built a Venezuelan fine-dining career across the US South before coming home to open Leal Restaurante in Caracas with pastry chef and co-chef Mariana Montero. His work is the most articulate argument that 'modern criollo' is a real culinary category, not just a marketing slogan.
Global AmbassadorWhite Envelope · Miami, United States
Federico Tischler is among the Venezuelan chefs building a serious modern criollo presence in the Miami diaspora. The 2018 Armando Scannone Award winner from the Academia Venezolana de Gastronomia, he ran Well Fed in Coral Gables (closed January 2026 per Yelp) and now operates White Envelope, a modern arepa bar in Miami.
In-Country MasterLa Casa Bistro · Caracas, Venezuela
Francisco Abenante is the Caracas chef-patron of La Casa Bistro, which he runs with Valentina Semtei. With 26 years in Venezuelan kitchens — first in Barquisimeto, now in Caracas — he received the 2015 Armando Scannone Award from the Academia Venezolana de Gastronomia, one of the country's most authoritative culinary honors.
Global AmbassadorAthenee Palace Hilton Bucharest / Hilton Amsterdam (Roberto's) · Bucharest, Romania
Franz Conde is the Caracas-born, CEGA-trained classical chef who turned a Venezuelan apprenticeship under Armando Scannone into a globe-spanning Hilton executive-chef career. After early years at Seasons Club Caracas — where a young Sumito Estevez worked as his sous-chef in 1990 — Conde moved through Italy, England, Switzerland, Turkey, Romania and the Netherlands, most recently leading the kitchens at Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest and Hilton Amsterdam's Roberto's.
In-Country MasterInstituto Culinario de Caracas (co-founder) · Caracas, Venezuela
Hector Romero co-founded the Instituto Culinario de Caracas with Sumito Estevez — the school that for the first time gave Venezuela a formal culinary education program. The chefs working in Caracas restaurants today, and many of those now scattered across the diaspora, came through the curriculum Romero helped build.
In-Country MasterCocido a Mano (cooking school) · Caracas, Venezuela
Helena Ibarra broke a glass ceiling Venezuelan gastronomy didn't talk much about — the first Venezuelan woman to run the executive kitchen of a five-star hotel. Today her cooking school Cocido a Mano is one of the most influential teaching kitchens in Caracas, and her award-winning cookbooks have shaped how a generation of Venezuelan cooks understands criollo home cuisine.
In-Country MasterAmapola · Caracas, Venezuela
Irina Pedroso is the chef-patron of Amapola in Caracas — a modern criollo restaurant with a deliberately narrative approach to the menu. Named by PanamericanWorld as one of four leading women of Venezuelan cuisine, her work fits into the broader female-leadership wave reshaping the country's restaurant scene.
In-Country MasterCordero · Caracas, Venezuela
Self-taught and stubborn about it, Issam Koteich runs Cordero in Caracas — a 24-course tasting menu built entirely around lamb from a single farm 40 minutes away. The best restaurant in Venezuela, and the proof that you don't need to leave to be world-class.
In-Country MasterEl Bosque Bistro · Caracas, Venezuela
Ivan Garcia runs El Bosque Bistro in Caracas — the closest thing the city has to a proper Paris-style neighborhood bistro, but with Venezuelan ingredients at its core. One of five Venezuelans honored at Best Chef Awards 2024, he has built a kitchen that holds high standards without pretending it isn't a working restaurant in a working city.
Global AmbassadorMerito · Lima, Peru
Juan Luis Martinez runs Merito in Lima, the highest-ranked Venezuelan restaurant in the world at #26 on the 50 Best list. His Venezuelan-Peruvian fusion — arepas with guasacaca alongside Peruvian scallops and giant corn — earned him 3 Knives at Best Chef 2025, the highest honor any Venezuelan has received.
Global AmbassadorArepa Mia · Atlanta, USA
Lis Hernandez is the Caracas-born chef-owner of Arepa Mia in Avondale Estates, on the Atlanta metro's east side. The restaurant has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand for three consecutive years (2023, 2024 and 2025), placing it among the most decorated Venezuelan restaurants in the United States.
In-Country MasterAcacia Comedor · Caracas, Venezuela
Maria Fernanda Correa is the modern voice within Acacia Comedor's Scannone-anchored kitchen. Co-chef with Mercedes Oropeza, she contributes the contemporary plating, the lighter sauce work, and the seafood program that lets the restaurant operate as both a faithful keeper of the canon and a living, evolving dining room.
In-Country MasterCacao de Origen · Caracas, Venezuela
Caracas-born chocolatier and educator who turned Venezuelan cacao into an organized national cause. Founder of Cacao de Origen and the Kakao chocolate-school network, she won the 2016 Basque Culinary World Prize for training thousands of women cacao producers and rebuilding the value chain from the inside out.
In-Country MasterLeal Restaurante · Caracas, Venezuela
Mariana Montero runs the pastry program at Leal Restaurante in Caracas as co-chef alongside Edgar Leal. Her work is one of the strongest arguments that modern Venezuelan pastry deserves its own conversation — the bienmesabe and quesillo classics rendered with contemporary technique without losing the criollo soul.
In-Country MasterAcacia Comedor · Caracas, Venezuela
Mercedes Oropeza is the keeper of the Armando Scannone canon — the foundational recipe corpus of Caracas cooking. Her work at Acacia Comedor, with co-chef Maria Fernanda Correa, is one of the most disciplined and respected modern criollo programs in the city. The 2009 Scannone Award named after the master was given to her for exactly this reason.
In-Country MasterLe Gourmet (Caracas Hilton, historical) / Independent consulting · Caracas, Venezuela
The chef who put the Venezuelan Amazon on a fine-dining plate. Trained at the Ritz Paris and Le Biarritz, Nelson Mendez ran the kitchen at the Caracas Hilton's Le Gourmet for decades and built a career around indigenous Amazonian ingredients — ants, cacao pulp, river fish, casabe, yopo wood smoke — long before the rest of Latin America discovered them.
Global AmbassadorMono · Hong Kong, China
The first Venezuelan to earn a Michelin star, Ricardo Chaneton spent seven years at the world's best restaurant before opening Mono in Hong Kong — where arepas share the menu with turbot and Racan pigeon, and nobody blinks.
Global AmbassadorMaz · Tokyo, Japan
At 28, Santiago Fernandez became the first Venezuelan to hold two Michelin stars, cooking Latin American cuisine through the lens of Peru's vertical ecosystems at Maz in Tokyo. A Caracas kid who trained at the world's best and now runs one of them.
In-Country Master· Caracas, Venezuela
Physicist turned culinary evangelist, Sumito Estevez wrote the book on Venezuelan food — literally, 15 volumes of it. He co-founded the country's first culinary institute, created its gastronomic association, and through TV, radio, and relentless public advocacy made Venezuelans care about their own cuisine.
Global AmbassadorMita · Washington D.C., United States
Tatiana Mora and Miguel Guerra run Mita in Washington D.C., a plant-based Latin American tasting menu that earned a Michelin star in 2024. Mora became the first Venezuelan woman with a star; Guerra, the youngest Venezuelan to hold one.
In-Country MasterRon Diplomatico (DUSA) · La Miel, Yaracuy, Venezuela
Tito Cordero is the Master Blender of Ron Diplomatico — the rum from Destilerias Unidas in Yaracuy that has won more international spirits competitions than any other Venezuelan distillate. He is the public face of Venezuela's Denominacion de Origen Controlada rum tradition on the world stage, and one of the most decorated blenders in Latin American spirits.
In-Country MasterMoreno · Caracas, Venezuela
Victor Moreno was one of the first Venezuelan chefs to train at a three-Michelin-starred kitchen — Santi Santamaria's Can Fabes in Catalonia — and brought that level of technical rigor back to Caracas, where Moreno has been a flagship high-end Venezuelan restaurant for years. His seafood cookery in particular has set a standard others measure themselves against.
