Carolina Bazán

For more than two decades, Carolina Bazán has built restaurants around the food she wants to cook rather than the expectations surrounding it. Now, the chef known as “China” is having one of her most international chapters yet. In 2025, her cooking stretched from Santiago to Valparaíso and London, where she helped shape Mareida, a restaurant devoted to Chilean flavors that joined the MICHELIN Guide in April 2026.

Mareida opened in Fitzrovia in June 2025 with a menu overseen by Bazán and a wine program shaped by her wife and longtime business partner, sommelier Rosario Onetto. The idea was refreshingly straightforward: introduce London to dishes such as pastel de choclo, caldillo and empanadas, respecting what makes them familiar while allowing room for a contemporary touch. Its wine list is entirely Chilean, making the restaurant as much an introduction to the country as it is a place to eat.

That same interest in Chilean cooking appeared closer to home with Ambrosía Pop Up, which Bazán opened at Hotel Gervasoni in Valparaíso. The more intimate concept centered on simple, recognizable dishes with intense flavors, from caldillo de congrio to flan. Together, Valparaíso and London showed a different side of a chef whose cooking has long absorbed influences from the many places she experienced growing up and later during her training in France.

Bazán was only 23 when she took charge of Ambrosía, the restaurant she opened with her mother in downtown Santiago in 2003. After spending time in France, she returned to Chile with a deeper appreciation for fresh, seasonal ingredients and relaunched Ambrosía in Las Condes in 2013. The restaurant would spend seven consecutive years on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and in 2019, Bazán was named Latin America’s Best Female Chef.

© Courtesy of Carolina Bazán

But longevity has also changed the way she thinks about success. After years of a restaurant schedule that demanded nights, weekends and family occasions, Bazán began reconsidering how much of her life the kitchen should consume. She and Onetto are parents of two, and over time she shifted toward working primarily during the day without stepping away from the ambitious projects that built her reputation.

In fact, Ambrosía Bistró at Mercado Urbano Tobalaba (MUT) is the largest restaurant Bazán has led in more than 20 years. Its open kitchen, diverse clientele and busy dining room reflect what her career looks like today: still creative and demanding, but designed with a different rhythm.

That may be the most interesting part of Bazán’s latest chapter. Her cooking is reaching farther than ever, yet she is no longer measuring growth simply by how much more she can take on. From a packed dining room in Santiago to Chilean flavors finding a new audience in London, she is showing that a career can expand while the person behind it decides to live differently.

For Carolina Bazán, the next chapter is not about doing everything. It is about knowing what deserves a place at the table.