The restaurants that became a reason to travel.

I'm writing this from Bolivia. This country wasn't on my itinerary for its gastronomic culture — but the food scene here is harder to ignore the longer I stay. Highly underestimated if you ask me.

What strikes me the most, though, isn't the cuisine itself. It's the posture. A new generation of Bolivian chefs — many rooted in indigenous Aymara and Quechua traditions — seems to have made a collective decision: stop apologising for what Bolivian food isn't, and build from what it actually is. Altitude. Biodiversity. Ingredients that have no real equivalent anywhere else — oca, tarwi, cañahua, native potato varieties numbered in the thousands.

The result is a food scene that doesn't look like anywhere else, because it's not trying to. It's fiercely local not as a marketing decision but as a genuine expression of place.

This connects to a broader shift happening in hospitality in 2026. Hotel dining and destination restaurants are no longer passive amenities — they're becoming the primary reason people choose where to go. Research from WATG this year found that 60% of luxury travellers now prioritise staying somewhere with a great restaurant. F&B is the draw, not the afterthought.

The lesson for anyone building a food business isn't about being Bolivian or altitude-specific. It's simpler: the most compelling concepts are the ones that could only exist where they exist. Not built against their context — built from it.

If your concept could open anywhere, it might not stand for anything.

Gustu is the restaurant in La Paz co-founded by Claus Meyer — one of the original minds behind Noma — that sources 100% Bolivian ingredients and trains chefs from underserved communities. It's now run by Bolivian chefs Jairo Michel and Kenzo Hirose, after former head chef Marsia Taha — named Latin America's Best Female Chef 2024 — left in October 2024 to open her own restaurant, Arami, focused on Amazonian ingredients and rainforest produce.

I haven't eaten at either (yet) — both are on the list. But the trajectory matters: a restaurant builds the thesis, trains the people, proves the concept. Then those people leave and open something of their own, pushing the scene further. That's how a food culture compounds.

The founding logic at Gustu — build everything around what Bolivia actually has, not what fine dining elsewhere is supposed to look like — produced not just one good restaurant, but a generation of chefs who think the same way.

The most interesting conversations I have with new projects start in the same place: not “what do you want to sell” but “where does this actually come from?” That’s where the positioning lives — and usually where the most honest version of the concept is hiding.

Carla
Founder, kooleats