Quiñones is the daughter of Honorato and Evangelina, the creators of this plate turned into the seal of the Cochabamba Department in Bolivia.

The heir to Evangelina Rojas said during her presentation at the Ministry of Cultures, Decolonization and Depatriarchalization that the right mix of beef, sausage, potatoes “al bastón,” chopped tomatoes, and “locotos” (spicy), the ingredient for which the sought-after dish is named, is enough to prepare it.

Its history goes back to 1969, at the Cochabamba restaurant El Prado, where over weekends family friends, mainly pilots, technicians, and stewardesses of Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, met to eat and drink.

One evening, in order to help counteract the effects of alcohol, doña Evangelina offered eaters abundant beef, mixed with the other ingredients, except for the tomato which was added later.

Little by little, when seeing the unique plate, other “clients began to ask for it and many, when tasting it, agreed to say: “This is a “picado” for “machos,” referring to how hot it was.

As it was in high demand, the married couple included it in the restaurant’s usual menu and named it “pique a lo macho.”

The couple’s economic success prompted them to transfer the food venture to a larger place of their own in 1978; it was named Quinta Miraflores Restaurant. The business venture, which Evangelina tended until her last days, was the fruit of her love and that of Honorato’s.

As a legacy, she asked her children not to give up their work and clients.

Due to their dedication to work and the creation of the dish which went beyond Cochabamba and extended throughout Bolivia and beyond its borders, Cochabamba’s Chamber of Restaurant and Related Fields Businessmen and the local tourism board presented her, when she was alive, with the Alejo Catalayud and Social Tradition Merit Order on September 14, 2004.

Taken from Orbe

By José Castañeda Torres, Correspondent/La Paz

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