Virgilio Martinez Veliz was born on August 31, 1977, in Lima, Peru, according to Wikipedia. As a teenager he pursued competitive skateboarding, a path he set aside after an injury, and he went on to study law in Lima before deciding to leave that track for cooking, per Reporter Gourmet. He trained formally at Le Cordon Bleu, earning his diploma in Ottawa and further certification in London, according to the same profile. He is married to fellow chef Pia Leon, who runs her own acclaimed Lima restaurant, Kjolle, and his sister, food researcher Malena Martinez, later became his closest collaborator in building the research side of his business, per Wikipedia.

After finishing his culinary training, Martinez spent close to a decade working in kitchens abroad, including a stint at Lutece in New York City, a period at Can Fabes in Sant Celoni, Spain, and posts as an executive chef for Astrid & Gaston in both Bogota and Madrid, according to Reporter Gourmet. That run of fine-dining experience across three countries gave him the technical grounding he later applied to Peruvian ingredients. In June 2012 he opened his first restaurant as chef-owner, Senzo, inside the Palacio Nazarenas hotel in Cusco, and the following month he opened Lima in London’s Fitzrovia neighborhood, marking his first venture outside South America, per the same profile and CNN.

Martinez’s defining move was opening Central in Lima’s Barranco district, a restaurant built around the idea of serving ingredients organized by the altitude at which they grow, from Pacific Ocean seaweed to potatoes harvested above 4,000 meters in the Andes, according to CNN. Central entered The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for the first time in 2013 at number 50, then jumped 35 places to number 15 in 2014, winning that year’s Highest Climber award and being named the Best Restaurant in Latin America, per The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. That climb, unusually fast even by the standards of the list, established Martinez as one of the defining chefs of the Peruvian gastronomic boom.

Central’s rise continued for the following decade: the restaurant topped Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list again in 2022 and climbed to number 2 on the global World’s 50 Best list that same year, according to PR Newswire. On June 20, 2023, Central was named The World’s Best Restaurant, making it the first restaurant from South America ever to take the top spot, according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Forbes. Following that win, Central was inducted into the list’s Best of the Best hall of fame, per The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Separately, his London restaurant Lima earned a Michelin star in the 2014 Michelin Guide, according to the Michelin Guide.

Martinez became one of the most recognized ambassadors of Peruvian cuisine internationally, profiled by outlets including CNN as the chef most responsible for putting Peru’s biodiversity on the world’s fine-dining map, according to CNN. His profile grew further as he took his cooking on the road for guest events, including a widely covered pop-up bringing Peruvian ingredients to Hong Kong, per the Michelin Guide. Central’s 2023 world number-one ranking, achieved jointly with his wife and co-chef Pia Leon, turned both chefs into figureheads of Peru’s broader culinary rise on the international stage, according to Forbes.

Martinez’s outside income leans toward publishing and screen exposure rather than product endorsement deals. He co-authored the cookbook “Central,” published by Phaidon Press in 2016 with writer Nicholas Gill, according to Wikipedia. He was also featured in Season 3 of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table,” a series that has become a significant promotional platform for the chefs it profiles, per Wikipedia. No outlet reviewed for this profile documents a paid brand ambassador deal of the kind common among television-famous chefs; his public commercial activity centers on his own restaurants and books rather than third-party campaigns.

Martinez built a small international restaurant group rather than staying with a single site. Alongside flagship Central and Kjolle, the more casual Lima restaurant run day-to-day by Pia Leon, he opened Lima and Lima Floral in London, and in March 2017 he opened Lima in Dubai’s City Walk development, according to The National. In March 2018 he opened Mil, a restaurant and research kitchen set beside the Inca terraces of Moray in Peru’s Sacred Valley, run in partnership with two local farming communities, per Dezeen. In 2013 he co-founded Mater Iniciativa with his sister Malena Martinez, an interdisciplinary research center that sends expeditions across Peru’s ecosystems to document ingredients that later appear on his menus, according to Wikipedia. He also developed the menu for Estero in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in December 2021, per Reporter Gourmet.

No outlet reviewed for this profile has published details of a personal home or residential property portfolio belonging to Martinez. His most significant identifiable physical assets are the buildings that house his restaurants. Central occupies a converted historic residence in Barranco, reworked with local firm Estudio Rafael Freyre to blend contemporary architecture with traditional Peruvian materials, according to The Spaces. Mil, his restaurant and research kitchen in the Sacred Valley, sits in a building the same firm carved into the landscape beside the Moray archaeological site, with a grass roof and terraced steps that double as growing beds, per Dezeen. Ownership structures for the international outposts in London and Dubai are not publicly disclosed.