Katie

Katie Button’s full biography is carried in the archive’s anchor entry for her, Arroz Meloso de Gambas (America’s Culinary Cup, Series 1, Episode 9, Spain / rice round); a second abbreviated entry accompanies the Spanish Tri-Tip Slider from Episode 2.

In brief: Button trained as a biomedical engineer before turning to cooking, staged at elBulli and Jean Georges, and opened Cúrate, the Spanish tapas bar in Asheville, North Carolina, with her family in 2011.

She is a multiple James Beard Award nominee. Her professional identity is built on Spanish cooking learned deeply rather than inherited - the pattern the archive has been tracking as adopted-heritage fluency. That is the relevant context for this entry, because Peru is not that adopted heritage. On camera Button said plainly that she had not cooked Peruvian food and had never made a dumpling, and that she would have to trust her instincts. The dish that follows is the record of a chef working outside both her cuisine and her technique at the same time, at the top-five stage of the competition.