Colombian chef Leonor Espinosa has been recognized with the World’s Best Female Chef 2022 award given to the best chef in the world by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization, which annually prepares and publishes the prestigious list of the fifty best restaurants in the world.
Self-taught, Leonor Espinosa has been at the forefront of innovation in Colombian cuisine – the second most biodiverse country in the world with over 51,000 different species – for fifteen years at her restaurant Leo in Bogotá, where she has achieved a unique, cerebral and profound style of cooking that sets her apart from her contemporaries, while at the same time seeking to use gastronomy as a tool for socioeconomic development, a concept that goes far beyond applying haute cuisine techniques to Colombian ingredients.
Leonor Espinosa
And all this without having been specifically trained in cooking. As a young woman, Leonor Espinosa studied economics and fine arts, and later worked as an advertising executive until the age of 35. Although he soon realized that this line of work could not satisfy his creative spirit, he never stopped practicing the arts and studying economics, he simply began to do so through a gastronomic lens. After learning to cook for herself, she opened her own restaurant, Leo, in 2007. Her concept, which she defines as ‘Ciclo-Bioma’, is based on finding innovative ways to incorporate underutilized species into a new type of modern Colombian cuisine and, in turn, using gastronomy as an impetus for the social and economic development of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.
An idea that has more than stood the test of time, as his restaurant Leo has been included in eight editions of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants to date, became the first Colombian venue to enter the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2019, and ranks 46th in the latest ranking for 2021.
In 2017, Espinosa received the Basque Culinary World Prize for his innovative work with Funleo, a non-profit organization he created with daughter Laura Hernández-Espinosa in support of Colombia’s ethnic communities by identifying, recovering and promoting the culinary traditions of indigenous communities, while promoting their well-being and health with programs that enhance the use of indigenous ingredients and empower the groups towards food sovereignty.
