He sweeps into the press conference like a rock star, dressed in black designer jeans and a black leather jacket. After a brief talk to push an upcoming food festival, Gastón Acurio steps off the stage and is immediately surrounded by TV crews, radio reporters, and food writers, all clamoring for attention and a good shot.

After half an hour facing cameras and interviews, Acurio makes a break for the door, flanked by two massive bodyguards. He climbs into a black S.U.V., a bodyguard slams the door, and they head to La Mar—a seafood restaurant that is just one of Acurio's seven Lima eateries.

Acurio is the most famous chef you've never heard of. In the last five years, the 41-year-old has emerged as a celebrity south of the equator: He has more than a dozen high-end restaurants in Peru, with outposts in Mexico, Panama, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, and even Spain, plus a comfort-food chain, two fast-food franchises, a culinary school in Lima, a luxury eco-hotel opening next year, and a hit cooking show that plays constantly on Peruvian TV. Acurio's businesses reportedly made $65 million in 2007, and revenues are expected to nearly double to $120 million in 2008.

Over the last two decades, Peruvian cuisine has gone from being overlooked (even in Peru) to the hottest trend in South America, thanks in part to Acurio's evangelism. "Peruvian cuisine is a phenomenon," says Mayalen Elizondo, a society editor at the Mexico City daily Excelsior. "In Mexico, everyone wants to interview Gastón. He's considered one of the most important chefs in the world."

But Acurio admits that his biggest challenge is yet to come: making Peruvian the new Japanese in the U.S. His first beachhead: A La Mar outlet on San Francisco's Embarcadero that opened in early October and has been packed ever since. "Thirty years ago, there were no Japanese restaurants in the U.S.," Acurio says. "Then one day Americans started eating seaweed and raw fish. Now there's a sushi restaurant on every corner. Why can't we do the same with Peruvian cooking?"

Acurio's plan is to conquer America by using top-end restaurants to brand Peruvian cuisine, then introduce some of his mid-market and fast-food outlets. "The mission is that all these brands will become global," Acurio says. "They all can't do it at the same time—we want to present Peruvian food at the highest level first, and if there's a good reaction, we can put more democratic restaurants in the market."

That's the model that rocketed Acurio to celebrity in less than a decade. After dropping out of law school in Lima, Acurio went to Spain and France, where he enrolled at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. When he got back to Lima in 1994, he opened a French restaurant named Astrid & Gastón.

Around the same time, young chefs in Lima were beginning to use—even flaunt—local ingredients in their cooking. The potato was first domesticated in the Peruvian Andes more than 7,000 years ago, and crops including tomatoes, corn, and squash all originated in the highlands of South America. The arrival of the Spanish conquistadors brought European ingredients and cooking techniques to Peru; later waves of immigrants from Africa, China, and Japan all added their own flavors to the mix.

American gourmets have already had a hint of Peru's fusion thanks to Nobu Matsuhisa, whose eponymous restaurants owe much to the three years he spent in Peru in the 1980s. "Everyone who flocks to Nobu for his quirky sushi and sashimi is unknowingly chowing down on Peruvian food," says Michael Whiteman, president of restaurant consulting firm Baum & Whiteman.

The 1990s saw a reimagining of Peru's heritage now referred to as cocina novoandina, or "new Andean cuisine." Acurio became the movement's most recognizable figure, shifting his menu from French cooking towards imaginative Peruvian creations. By 2003, Astrid & Gastón was the hottest restaurant in Lima. The menu's mix of local ingredients and haute-European presentation results in dishes like the "Crispy guinea pig confit with denomination-of-origin haumantanga, duraznillo, huayro, and yanaimilla potatoes in different textures and huando-orange-scented reduction" that recently appeared on the dinner menu.

He parlayed Astrid & Gastón's success into a TV show and four other chains, including La Mar. Over lunch at La Mar, Acurio sits at a table laden with brightly colored bowls of his best hope for breaking big in America: cebiche, the Peruvian take on raw seafood marinated in citrus, hot ají pepper, and a stunning variety of other ingredients—from fat-kerneled Peruvian corn to black squid ink. "You need to have an icon for the first time. You have to start building a story," Acurio says. "Cebiche is fresh, light, has intense flavor, is authentic. It's the perfect weapon."

Whiteman agrees that cebiche should be an easy sell in a market already infatuated with sushi. "For Americans, the Peruvian raw-fish recipes are potentially far more exciting in the mouth—and exciting intellectually—than the Japanese stuff."

La Mar Cebicheria Peruana in San Francisco is the first of three Acurio is opening in the U.S. over the next year; New York and Las Vegas locations are planned for 2009. "The thought was San Francisco or New York made the most sense to open in, given the credibility those two food markets would give him going forward," says David Fukuda, a real estate consultant in San Francisco who is one of Acurio's investors.

Whether he can make Peruvian food a global brand remains to be seen. Early reports from San Francisco are promising, though—the buzz on foodie sites like Yelp is strong, and Gourmet and Food & Wine have run adoring profiles.

For all his business success, Acurio seems far more interested in food and restaurant concepts than in managing a business that spans three continents. When asked at his work space and atelier in Lima how many people work for him, he has to stop and think. "Fifteen hundred, maybe?" he says hesitantly. His business offices are in an entirely different building—by design. "I don't see operations, don't see corporate business things, don't see contracts," he shrugs. "I just come here, cook, think, promote, research, inspire."