Mirciny Moliviatis is a renowned chef with a passion to share with everyone the deliciousness found in Guatemala.

Mirciny Moliviatis was born and raised in Guatemala and has Greek heritage. She got the spark for cooking when her father brought an Easy-Bake Oven back from a trip to China. At 7, Mirciny didn’t want to just pretend to cook a cake, she went a step further. She grabbed some of the ingredients in her mom’s kitchen and baked a beautiful chocolate cake and gave it to her 2 brothers to eat, which resulted in some stomach aches. That first chocolate cake was the beginning of Mirciny’s love affair with food.

Her father Dimitri Molyviatis was general secretary of the country’s Christian Party that was in government in the 80’s.

Mirciny went to Spain to study and work with the great chefs of today, Karlos Arguiñano and Ferran Adrià. While abroad, she noticed she didn’t know a lot about the food she grew up eating back in Guatemala. That’s when she found her purpose in life, master Guatemalan cuisine and share it with the world. Mirciny went back to Guatemala and joined a local TV show where she traveled around Guatemala, with her father, learning everything that has to do with the local dishes that have been passed from generation to generation.

In 2005, she started her own catering business focused on cuisined‘a uteur, mixing Guatemalan ingredients with known flavors while using modern techniques. With influences from her grandma Chave, Chef Anne-Sophie, Chef Elena Arzak, Chef Carmen Ruscalleda, she’s been inspired to work hard in a career dominated by, mostly, men. And the hard work has paid off.

Mircniny has been named Ambassador of Guatemala’s Gastronomic Culture and awarded Person of the Year by Guatemala’s Restaurant Gild Association “Tenedor de Oro” (“Golden Fork”), both in 2013. She’s also been the face of KitchenAid and Pepsi in Guatemala.

Aside from her amazing skills in the kitchen, Mirciny has made it her mission to always lend a helping hand throughout her career. Her new book “Viviendo La Receta” (“Living the Recipe”) is a green book, since a tree was planted for every printed page. She is involved in Erick Quiora Alas Foundation, which makes dreams come true for children with cancer. And has been involved in many others like Margarita Tejada, Funsepa, Food for the Hungry, among others. Plus! Mirciny gave SHEVA the space to tell about our mission at the season finale of her show “Desafio Culinario”. Now, that’s a chef with a mission.

And her latest achievement was having Chef Andrew Zimmern (Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern) as a guest in the beautiful Guatemala. The episode truly showed the amazing, and delicious, local cuisine made by the very talented Guatemalans