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Leo Espinosa receives Terrae 2025 award

In recognition of all the work that Funleo has done in the kitchen and, since its creation, in the social sphere to defend indigenous communities and their values, including gastronomic values, the Colombian chef will receive the Congress Prize at this year's event.

If last year's Terrae prize went to the pioneer of the recovery of traditional cuisine in Latin America, the Peruvian Gastón Acurio, this year's edition could not have a better disciple than the Colombian Leonor Espinosa. Chef-artist or artist-chef, it is not clear in which order to describe her, this chef has done a great deal of work in recovering Colombia's cuisine, but above all in giving visibility to the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, their territories and the need to promote their development and recover their cultural characteristics, including their ingredients and their cuisine.

Espinosa, for whom gastronomy is an artistic process with a strong social component, saw the need to give value to all those traditions that, if not taken care of, could be lost. Thus, two years after opening her restaurant Leo in Bogotá, the chef embarked on a project that would give meaning to her cuisine: the Funleo social foundation. Funleo began in the Amazon, experimenting with species that could potentially be used in gastronomy, a project that made Espinosa aware of the enormous biodiversity and richness of these areas. Few restaurants in Latin America at the time were talking about biodiversity and using it. It was something new. We also began to see it as a tool for promoting projects and generating social welfare,' recalls Leo of the early days of Funleo.

Espinosa, who was named the world's best chef in 2022 by The World's 50 Best Restaurants, has continued her work at the helm of Funleo, defending the ancestral knowledge and practices of indigenous populations while promoting rural growth processes within a framework of food sovereignty, marketing channels with small producers, as well as spaces for education, nutrition, entrepreneurship and tourism.

This is how the Colombian chef promotes her country's cuisine, appealing to tradition from her restaurant in the capital, but with her heart and soul in all those rural areas where a cultural heritage and biodiversity are protected and preserved. This is not only the past of these regions, but also their present and should be their future.