Ecuadorian chef from Netflix’s The Final Table popping up in Toronto

A celebrated Ecuadorian chef is doing a dinner in Toronto, and it’s so much more than your average pop-up.

Rodrigo Pacheco has been featured on The Final Table on Netflix, is a Goodwill Ambassador in Ecuador at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and has been a jury member for the Bocuse d’Or world gastronomy competition.

He developed a culinary project called “The largest Biodiverse Edible Forest in the world” as executive director of the Bocavaldivia Foundation, named for the restaurant where he’s the executive chef and founder which has taken a spot as one of the World’s Best Restaurants. He’s also the chef and founder of restaurant Foresta, which places an emphasis on conservation as well.

Pacheco specializes in sustainable tourism that aims to restore ecosystems, which he exemplifies through his cooking, using ancestral ingredients and techniques while educating diners on their origins and value.

Bocavaldivia is located in Puerto Cayo in Ecuador and mostly uses produce from the surrounding area, serving tasting menus that include dishes like a salad of forest leaves that includes cassava leaves, or chicken caramlized in volcanic stone.

For the Toronto dinner, he’s teaming up with chef Diego Reyes. Reyes has done his own pop-ups under the name Quito and is also from Ecuador. The menus for his Quito pop-ups (named for the capital of Ecuador) consisted of dishes like grilled sweet plantain, fried yuca, roast pork leg and empanadas.

“Chef Rodrigo is one of the front leaders of our culture and does a very good job at representing what our culture is all about while still incorporating different elements,” Reyes tells YourCityWithIN.

Pacheco’s Toronto dinner is taking place at, of all places, French restaurant Chantecler, where Reyes is currently the head chef. Reyes invited his fellow Ecuadorian chef to be a guest chef at the restaurant for a night.

“I think he is doing a great job and that he will be part of the next generation of chefs that are making a difference and representing Ecuadorian culinary heritage,” Pacheco tells YourCityWithIN.

“The menu is inspired in ancestral techniques, traditions and products from Ecuador that will represent a contemporary cuisine with a vision of the future.”

“We both will be cooking together, basically a collaborative menu, bringing French techniques and Canadian ingredients, as per Chantecler, together with Ecuadorian cuisine,” says Reyes.

The menu for the six-course pop-up dinner includes dishes like an ancestral Amazonian snack with cured trout and cassava, a fresh prawn ceviche, cantaloupe chilled soup, marinated scallop, caramelized Chantecler chicken and eggplant cheesecake.

“It’s a very cool menu. We are showcasing a couple ingredients like neapia and salprieta, which are ancestral recipes from our home country,” says Reyes.

“But what I think makes it special is that Chef Rodrigo brings this different approach about sustainability and working hand to hand with nature.”

Rodrigo Pacheco is popping up at Chantecler on June 4 with a price of $145 per person and staggered bookings available through the night, which can be reserved online.

During his stay in Canada, Pacheco will be part of different collaborations in Montreal, Toronto and London, and he says he “will be happy to come back for more soon.”

As for whether Reyes and Pacheco will continue working together in the future, keep an eye on these exciting Ecuadorian chefs, as Reyes says he’s working with Pacheco on something else.