Spotlight: Chef Oscar Riquelme

by David Stevens

A Place at the Table

After a ten-hour flight and a five-hour bus ride, I was welcomed into a house near a small fishing village on the central Chilean coast with one of the most nourishing bowls of food I have ever eaten. A crab stew prepared, as so many of the great dishes are, by a grandmother who in one bowl managed to restore my tired body, nurture my spirit, and make me feel immediately welcome into a place which to me was utterly foreign. The meal itself was new to me, but the embrace it embodied and the warmth with which it was offered told me immediately that I had a place at the table.

That was also the moment that I began to understand the love and passion that underpins Chef Oscar Riquelme’s cooking. Because this was the family home, in the village of Caleta de Pellines, where he grew up cooking and, in his words, “opening the table to our extended family and friends, both old and new.”  This belief in table being as a hub of community – along with the techniques, flavors, and regional traditions he absorbed alongside his grandmother, parents, and neighbors ­– continue to be central to Chef Riquelme’s food, even has life has taken him from Chile, to Texas, New York and around the world.   

We are honored and excited to have Chef Riquelme join us this year at ICWF, where he will lead a demonstration of the traditional cooking of Chile’s pacific coast. Noting the similarity to the techniques of his region to those of the Pacific Islands, he will work with ingredients local to Kaua’i to bring the flavor, and the welcome, of his hometown to all of us.

To learn more about Chef Riquelme, you can follow him on Instagram: @chefoscarquelme. To be welcomed to his table, you can join us on Kaua’i!