Creole Cuisine
1. Montuvia
Montuvia is a living archive of Manabí’s criollo cuisine. Valentina Álvarez, Sebastián Revelli, Lissete Betancourt and Merlin Roussel research and revive age-old techniques using clay and ash, wood fire, curing and leaf-wrapped cooking. Their work comes as much from study as from a cuisine that has been lived, inherited and shared. Viches, tongas, corviches and other classics appear in all their essential character.
Marrecife is a fine example of criollo cooking kept alive through family tradition. The corviches once served at Elba Mejía’s picantería became the seed of the restaurant her son, Iván Grain, opened in 2007. That continuity runs through dishes steeped in nostalgia yet full of life—a kitchen where identity still carries more weight than any passing trend.
At Bambú Bar, Irene Ribadeneira cooks from recipes and traditions passed down by her mother and grandmother, in the unmistakable style of old Quito. Quiteño ceviches, fanesca, tongue with mushrooms, figs with cheese: a family table sustained across three generations and by recipes carefully kept alive. Among them are her meat and cheese ajíes, traditional preparations that have all but vanished from menus, even at the city’s most traditional restaurants.
At 3,400 meters, the cooking at Dos Chorreras is inseparable from the landscape around it. Deep inside El Cajas National Park, the páramo turns setting into an essential ingredient. This is a kitchen with no need for manufactured sophistication, relying instead on what belongs here: a wood-fired oven and a high-Andean pantry that feels entirely at home in its natural surroundings.
Since 1997, Red Crab has built its identity around one of Guayaquil’s great social rituals: sitting down to eat crab. Its achievement has been turning that tradition into a serious seafood house without stripping away its family spirit. Mangroves, the coast and fresh catch anchor a kitchen where eating remains, above all, something meant to be shared.
