Lucy Haro is West LA’s Peruvian Soul Food Chef

Chef Lucy Haro is cooking up healthy Peruvian soul food for the whole community.

“Food is the one thing that unites people, and that’s why I want to tell my story,” Haro says on LatiNation’s original docu-series, Storytellers. “I think there [are] a lot of women who also do this, but don’t have a platform to share their art, their cuisine, or even their history.”

Lucy Haro shares about her craft on the docu-series, Storytellers.

Haro is the owner and head chef of Qusqo Bistro, an eclectic neighborhood kitchen in West LA. Here, she warmly shares her family’s recipes the way she remembers them growing up between rural Peru and urban California.

“We like to be at the heart of where we get our food,” Haro says. “I didn’t really appreciate it when I was younger.”

She thinks about her childhood like a series of Indiana Jones adventures.

In Peru, she’d go off exploring new villages in her country, looking for artifacts and uncovering tombs. Food was central to these experiences, her mother and grandmother at the helm of their family’s gastronomy. The aji amarillo, the quinoa, the lomo saltado.

In Los Angeles, she often felt left out of the Latino community.

“People don’t know where to place you, especially in Los Angeles. I’m not Mexican; some people think I’m Asian,” Haro says. “When you’re younger, I think you kind of reject your culture because you don’t want to be different, but I did really love [the food part]. I thought all the things we did in the kitchen, especially watching my grandmother and my mother work in there: it always seemed magical to me.”

So, when she decided to open her own restaurant, she sought to make space for Peruvian food and Peruvian food alone.

“I chose ‘Qusqo’ because in Quechua in means ‘belly of the world, center of nourishment’ and that was the guiding principle in our culture, that food would unite people,” she goes on to say.

And that’s exactly how her restaurant serves the community. When you go, you not only enjoy delicious food, but you also directly connect with a people and country thousands of miles away.

Lucy Haro in the kitchen at Qusqo Bistro.

Over the years, she has heard the stereotypes firsthand, that Latin food is unhealthy and carby.

Now, as the face behind Qusqo’s delicious menu, Haro showcases that Latin food goes beyond tortillas and rice, that there are healthy superfoods ingrained in the South American soil she comes from—and that it tastes amazing, too.

“We’re always learning things, and that’s the beauty about having an actual storefront. We’re connected to the community,” Haro says. “I’ve been here for seventeen years, and the goal has been the same: get people to know about Peru, learn about our culture, want the desire to go to Peru.”

Peru has famously brought together culinary practices from around the world, and Lucy Haro is adding her brushstroke to the country’s rich tapestry of flavors, right here in Los Angeles.

“Learn from your mother and grandmother, because this food … that they cook for you is an art, and it nurtures you not just in your body but in your soul,” she says.

Watch the entire interview with Chef Lucy Haro on Storytellers.