Start Latin lessons for the next big food trend

The biggest London food trend of 2012 has already started. Cabana, the Brazilian grill founded by veteran restaurateurs David Ponté and Jamie Barber at sites in Westfield and St Giles, has stolen a march on the wave of Brazilian and Peruvian restaurants due to hit the capital.

Cabana is the first of four major eateries that aim to do for these cuisines what Wahaca and a host of burrito bars did for Mexican food.

Following in Cabana's wake this spring are Peruvian restaurants Ceviche in Frith Street and Lima London in Fitzrovia, and Sushi Samba atop the Heron Tower in the City, which fuses Brazilian and Peruvian cooking with the influences of the region's Japanese population.

With the exception of the latter - the first foray of an established US chain into Britain - these are all independent start-ups.

The bright, funky Cabana revolves, if you'll excuse the pun, around skewers of succulent marinated meat and sausages rotating on a bespoke barbecue and doled out piping hot to customers piece by piece. There are also sandwiches and salads, chicken croquettes and black bean soup, cassava chips and frozen yoghurt, and beer chilled to -2C. You can make a feast of it or get out for under a tenner. It's a far cry from the upmarket hangouts (Momo, Hush) that Barber and Ponté have separately created in the past, and deliberately so.  

"I just wanted to do something young and dynamic, vivid and colourful," says Barber, 40. "That's Brazil."

Ponté, 47, was born in Rio de Janeiro, "on the day of the last military coup", and has long been an advocate of the country's cooking. "Cuisine is a bit of a big word for it," he says. "Basically it's comfort food, about being social. But right now it feels like South America and Brazil are really happening." The 2016 Olympics and the rampant Brazilian economy have focused attention, he thinks, on a culture where positive associations - sun, style, beautiful people - outweigh old aversions to the country as dangerous and corrupt.

Martin Morales feels that Peru, too, is emerging from its own dark history and Brazil's shadow for its own international moment in the sun. Born in Lima to a Peruvian mother, the 38-year-old fetched up in this country aged 11 in 1984 when his British father, who worked for an American mining company, was sent a "death letter" by the Maoist Shining Path terror group. Morales has mounted regular events celebrating Peruvian music and food in tandem with a high-powered career in music and publishing, which saw him sign KT Tunstall and help set up iTunes in the UK. Now he has quit his most recent post, with Disney, to set up Ceviche. What's more, he's sold the family home in Sheen to part-fund the £1.5 million start-up costs. "I'd been talking about this for 10 years," he says. "Now seemed the right time to push the button on it."

Opening on Frith Street in spring, Ceviche will be "accessible to everyone", and Morales's half-Peruvian, half-Venezuelan chef Alejandro Bello will showcase Peru's extraordinary variety. This ranges from river and sea fish to beans, chillies and more than 2,000 kinds of potato found in the different microclimates of the Andes. The restaurant will naturally also celebrate ceviche, the fish dish cold-cured in a spicy citrus marinade. "It's my favourite," says Morales. "It's fun and funky, it grabs you in the mouth, kisses you and stings you at the same time." All offset by a couple of Pisco Sour cocktails.

Later in the year, acclaimed Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez is to preside over the kitchen of Lima London, the first restaurant venture of Caracas-born, European-educated brothers Gabriel and Jose Gonzalez, aged 30 and 32. The two always wanted to create a business together: a wish that crystallised after they visited Lima five years ago and were, as Gabriel puts it, "blown away by the food. It's very varied and very healthy."

Like Morales, Gabriel has chucked in his job to pursue his dream. Like Morales, Gabriel eulogises the variety of Peru's ingredients and polyglot menus. And like Morales, he senses a groundswell of interest in the country's food that has reached beyond Latin America but has not yet reached London. We are ready for different dishes, he says. "Some years ago, sushi arrived, and now it has reached a certain point and become established," he says. "I think now, here, people are ready for something new. The market is ready for the new sushi."

In this, he echoes Jamie Barber, who argues that in the 10 years since he opened Hush, London dining has gone through a revolution. "Every 10 years there are new entries that shift everyone's expectations," Barber says. "Ten years ago it was Wagamama and Carluccio. Now it's Jamie's Italian, maybe Wahaca. It's about being bold, being flavoursome." In other words, being Latin.

Cabana-brasil.com
cevicheuk.com
limalondon.com