Vinicio
Vinicio Peñate grew up in Hermoso, El Salvador and has been drawn to the arts since childhood. He attended la Universidad de El Salvador where he studied graphic design. During his time at college, he began cooking using traditional family recipes and flourished in the expression of reunion, family, and celebration. Vinicio’s culinary career started off with simple dishes: homemade pizzas and cakes for friends’ birthdays.
An insatiable desire to cultivate and create, Vinicio was led to starting every meal from scratch and learning by trial and error, discovering the appropriate balance between salty, acidic, bitter, and sweet tastes. He gives credit to his mother, Berta, for introducing him to umami, the fifth taste. Vinicio also feels gratitude to his other teachers: the Cooking Channel in El Salvador and the TV show, The Iron Chef. When hosting gatherings, Vinicio learned the importance of bringing people together for a meal, to have fun and build a community. In this way, food became the medium which provided nourishment, both to the physical body and the heart. He then decided to enroll in the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco to broaden his experience and pursue cooking as a career.
Vinicio has excitedly accepted the position as Chef for The Extra Mile Adventure. He plans to provide nutritious, wholesome meals catering to vegans, raw foodists, and omnivores alike. To take it a step further, he will negotiate trades and sales with local vendors along the way to ensure local sustainability as well as ultimate freshness. Rather than “just making food”, Vinicio will share his knowledge of nutrition and earth’s great creations with everyone.
