Carolina Colque and Sergio Armella are the owners of the restaurant Ephedra outside of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Let me be clear when I say that this is a very unlikely restaurant. Two young, local Atacameños with no cooking experience, have opened a tasting menu restaurant in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth. It’s not even in the main town, San Pedro de Atacama, but in an ayllu, a traditional community a dozen kilometers away. I urge you to just go to their Instagram page right now and look at the food they are making and the ingredients they are working with. It will blow your mind.
The Atacama Desert, in the far north of Chile, is a special place. I have been there a few times over the years. The scenery is unreal, almost lunar at times, but it is the flavors there that have always excited me. In a place with little rain, most of the plants grow slowly, into large shrubs with brittle branches that develop one-of-a-kind flavors. There are also fruit trees, leguminous pods and fragrant flowers that only come out when there is a hint of moisture in the air. This is the kind of landscape Carolina and Sergio are working with.
Before starting the restaurant, Sergio’s cooking experience consisted of a Neapolitan pizza business they tried out during the pandemic, then he staged at Geranium, the 3 Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen, which is extremely technical, for a few months. What makes Ephedra special is their will to create a distinct experience in the place they are from. These unique ecosystems, not to mention the cultures that support them, are what makes Latin American food special.
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The Edible Plants of the Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert is one of the most difficult places on earth for life. The the soil is saturated with salt, there are strong winds and it only rains about 0.6 to 2 mm a year. Yet, within this struggle, not despite of these highly unusual conditions but because of them, what does grow here does so in a way unlike anywhere else. The flora and fauna of the Atacama have absolutely unique flavors, not to mention additional medicinal benefits. We have only begun to understand their enormous potential for use in gastronomy and nutrition.
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