Ayacucho Opens Its Kitchen
What "Perú, Mucho Gusto" Says About Food and the Regions

← Back to Latin America News

From June 27 to 29, the first stop of the 2026 edition of the touring fair "Perú, Mucho Gusto" is opening in the southern highland city of Ayacucho. Organized by PromPerú (the Peruvian Commission for the Promotion of Exports and Tourism) and the Ayacucho regional tourism office, the event gathers more than 50 exhibitors, including cooks, producers, artisans, and agribusiness players, making it one of the country's largest food celebrations.

Why Ayacucho? That question touches the very essence of this fair.

A Food Culture Beyond Lima and Cusco

When people think of Peruvian cuisine, even in Japan the dishes that come first are capital-born ones such as ceviche and lomo saltado, or Lima's celebrated restaurant Maido. Cusco, which draws crowds of tourists, carries the narrative of "Inca cuisine." Yet the distinctive culinary systems of each Andean highland region rarely receive the attention at home or abroad that their richness deserves.

Ayacucho sits in the south-central Andes at roughly 2,760 meters above sea level. It is the historic site of the "Battle of Ayacucho" (1824), the final clash of Peru's independence, and an archaeologically important place, home to ruins of the Wari civilization and the Pikimachay cave (a Paleolithic site). But in terms of tourist recognition it lags far behind Lima or Machu Picchu, and it is a region where economic benefits are slow to arrive.

Holding "Mucho Gusto" in Ayacucho is the practical expression of a strategy to generate economic activity in the "periphery" through food culture.

The Numbers Behind the Economic Impact

According to PromPerú's estimates, the four-city circuit of the 2026 fair (Ayacucho, Lima, Tacna, and Madrid for its first overseas edition) is expected to draw more than 560,000 visitors, with an economic ripple effect of 37 million soles (the equivalent of roughly 1.5 billion yen).

What these figures signify is more than a mere "food event." Local farm products sell, local chefs gain recognition, and the inflow of tourists generates spending on lodging, transport, and souvenirs. The food fair functions as a way to open an economic channel into "regions that tourism struggles to reach."

The Power of Memory in Food

Another layer of context is the weight of Ayacucho's history. From the 1980s into the 1990s, this region became the birthplace of the armed insurgency of Sendero Luminoso (the Shining Path) and suffered grave violence and human rights abuses. Tens of thousands lost their lives, and many families left their homeland.

Holding a celebration that puts "food" front and center in such a place carries the cultural implication of rebuilding regional identity. Food carries memory. When the soups and grain dishes that have been cooked in every household are reappraised on the stage of a tourism fair, it becomes, for residents, an experience of feeling that "our way of life has value."

A Platform That Connects the Regions

Peru's "gastronomic diplomacy" began with the work of Gastón Acurio and others in the 2000s, and it is now part of national strategy. A symbol of that globally praised tradition has been capital restaurants like Lima's Maido, which became the world's number one. The touring model of "Mucho Gusto" aims to deliver those achievements, once confined to the center, out to the regions. The 2026 Ayacucho edition is also an experiment to test whether that model can take root.

My Perspective

I believe that holding a food fair in the regions carries a meaning beyond the event itself. The money that moves during the three days of the fair is fleeting, but the real value lies in the shift in perception, the moment local producers and chefs feel that "our ingredients and dishes have market value." Once you have been valued from the outside, even once, that becomes a motivation to keep refining local ingredients, and it remains after the event ends. Precisely because it is held in the regions, the benefit falls directly on the area without routing through the capital. For a highland town that tourism struggles to reach, I think this is a channel of economic reactivation that cannot be ignored.

At the same time, I feel the model of "opening capital-centric gastronomic diplomacy to the regions" also has its challenges. If the touring fair ends as a one-off firework, all that remains locally is commemorative photos and a temporary bump in sales. The key will be how the connections forged at the fair, between producers and buyers, can keep being linked to subsequent logistics, sales channels, and tourism routes. Will a "turn for the regions" staged under central leadership be handed over to a system the regions can run on their own? Whether Ayacucho's attempt truly succeeded will only become clear, I think, when we look at the town next year, after the fair has gone.

Glossary

gastronomía (gastronomy) = food culture and fine cuisine; a word that frames cooking not as mere eating but as culture and industry. reactivación económica (economic reactivation) = a policy keyword for rebuilding a depressed regional economy. feria (fair) = a trade or product exhibition, here referring to the food celebration itself.

Food is memory, and a regional market is a culture's calling card. Ayacucho will prove it in three days.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.