Menu
They left home, but they took the sazón. From New York to London, Bogotá to Barcelona — Venezuelan chefs are reshaping global cuisine one kitchen at a time.
Hover or tap a dot to see the chef and restaurant at each location.
Armando Scannone
Author — Mi cocina, a la manera de Caracas
Caracas, Venezuela
Carlos Garcia
Alto
Caracas, Venezuela
Edgar Leal
Leal Restaurante
Caracas, Venezuela
Federico Tischler
White Envelope
Miami, United States
Francisco Abenante
La Casa Bistro
Caracas, Venezuela
Franz Conde
Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest / Hilton Amsterdam (Roberto's)
Bucharest, Romania
Hector Romero
Instituto Culinario de Caracas (co-founder)
Caracas, Venezuela
Helena Ibarra
Cocido a Mano (cooking school)
Caracas, Venezuela
Irina Pedroso
Amapola
Caracas, Venezuela
Issam Koteich
Cordero
Caracas, Venezuela
Ivan Garcia
El Bosque Bistro
Caracas, Venezuela
Juan Luis Martinez
Merito
Lima, Peru
Lis Hernandez
Arepa Mia
Atlanta, USA
Maria Fernanda Correa
Acacia Comedor
Caracas, Venezuela
Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe
Cacao de Origen
Caracas, Venezuela
Mariana Montero
Leal Restaurante
Caracas, Venezuela
Mercedes Oropeza
Acacia Comedor
Caracas, Venezuela
Nelson Mendez
Le Gourmet (Caracas Hilton, historical) / Independent consulting
Caracas, Venezuela
Ricardo Chaneton
Mono
Hong Kong, China
Santiago Fernandez Sain
Maz
Tokyo, Japan
Sumito Estevez
Caracas, Venezuela
Tatiana Mora & Miguel Guerra
Mita
Washington D.C., United States
Tito Cordero
Ron Diplomatico (DUSA)
La Miel, Yaracuy, Venezuela
Victor Moreno
Moreno
Caracas, Venezuela
Brief introductions to every Venezuelan chef featured on the map.
Author — 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.
Alto · 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.
Leal 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.
White 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.
La 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.
Athenee 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.
Instituto 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.
Cocido 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.
Amapola · 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.
Cordero · 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.
El 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.
Merito · 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.
Arepa 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.
Acacia 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.
Cacao 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.
Leal 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.
Acacia 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.
Le 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.
Mono · 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.
Maz · 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.
· 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.
Mita · 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.
Ron 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.
Moreno · 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.
