It was an extraordinarily short expedition by ground-breaking Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez's standards – less than five minutes on foot and on terrain as flat as a pan chuta.

Ben Shewry, chef patron of Attica restaurant, was giving the owner of Lima-based Central, No.4 on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, a lightning tour of Melbourne's historic Rippon Lea Estate, literally around the corner. Here, 33rd-placed Attica has a 2000-square-metre kitchen garden plot of more than 100 plants.

It was a chance for the visiting chef to acquaint himself with some of this country's indigenous flora that Shewry embraces in his cooking – plum pines, murnong, bunya and the like. "Foraging with Ben in his garden, I was happy to see plants I have never seen before," Martinez says.

But it also provided a chance to pick fresh ingredients for his menu ahead of a Four-Hand Dinner with Shewry: broad bean flowers for a pearl meat, shaved jicama and aji amarillo (yellow peppers) entree; camomile flower; and unfamiliar mints for both a warm avocado, squash and kanihua dish and a dessert of Amazonian cacao, clay and Andean plants.

The evening itself was part of a month-long tour launching his book Central across seven Asia-Pacific cities, which paired him in the kitchen with other 50-best luminaries in Mitsuharu Tsumura of Maido in Lima (13), André Chiang of Restaurant André in Singapore (32) and Richard Ekkebus of Amber in Hong Kong (20).

Of course, Martinez is neither a stranger to travel nor to the art of foraging. He has explored his native Peru extensively, scaling high and low its diverse microclimates at varying altitudes – from its seas, swamps and steppes to its jungles, forests and wooded slopes and its plains, plateaus and peaks. On the way he has unearthed thousands of indigenous flora and fauna.

Cuisine's natural foundation

It is these ingredients Martinez harvests from their natural habitat that form the foundation of his cuisine at Central. For example, there are: yuyo – an algae Martinez uses in a crab dish he calls Aranas de roca (Spiders of the rock); Andean quenual bark, an infusion of which he combines with ocas (tubers), oxalis (weed) and the grains quinoa and kiwicha; as well as tin tin fruit, which he pairs with Andean herbs. There are the grasses of the "altiplano" (ichu), edible clays (chaco), barks and resins, as well as native fruits and fish (such as the high-altitude perjerrey, Amazonian armoured catfish and the Fish of the Red Seeds).

It's an untamed multi-layered universe, if not hidden then not readily accessed, full of colour, texture and adventurous wonderment, in which the peripatetic chef has steeped himself for several years.

"I am enjoying most travelling through Peru than being in the kitchen," he admits. "It is contradictory of the role of a chef."

This same free spirit and sense of adventure turned Martinez on to a career cooking, which became a means of escape after injury cruelled his hopes of professional skateboarding and law seemed to lack freedom.

Martinez had long thought about Peru's rich biodiversity. But it was only after city officials temporarily closed his restaurant in 2010 due to zoning issues (an ongoing dispute prompted him to move) that he and fellow chef Pia Leon, now his wife, begin to experiment with obscure and uncommon produce.

Their adventures spawned the restaurant's research arm, Mater Iniciativa, run by his sister Malena and employing a swag of specialists from forest engineers to anthropologists. Mater, in turn, feeds a crazy-inventive tasting menu, with each dish created using only ingredients from the same altitude.

"I'll talk to anthropologists for hours about the Andean or Amazonian environment to be inspired to create something," says Martinez.

Flying up world rankings

His revolutionary approach has brought his restaurant attention and acclaim. Lonely Planet lists Central among a dozen top things to do in Lima. In the past few years, it has catapulted up the World's 50 Best rankings, from 50th in 2013 to 14th the next year and fourth for the past two – and topped Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants for the past three years.

His cuisine also sets Central apart from other celebrated Lima restaurants including Maido and Astrid y Gaston (at No.30, where Martinez cut his teeth). But Martinez stresses Central isn't after foodies.

"Many diners want something to happen, to be moved by the experience," he says. "You feel you're a part of this biodiversity … the landscape, sense of place and culture."

He hopes guests are encouraged to get out and make their own discoveries, but makes clear "we are not travel agents".

Martinez's attitude to altitude also yielded the book Central, part travelogue, part forager's handbook, love letter to Peru and cookbook. Chaptered in elevations, each recipe is a work of art as much as a meal. And while they are nigh on impossible to reproduce, they help crystallise the mountains of data Martinez and Mater have acquired.

"There's so much information," Martinez explains. "Just in one experience, we found 279 ingredients we haven't seen before."

Creating place of creativity

In fact, to better manage the mounting body of information, Martinez is moving Mater – "the soul of Central" – to Cusco, one-time capital of the Inca empire, where he'll open a test kitchen and another restaurant, Mil, early in the new year to support the venture (he has casual diners in London and Lima).

"It'll be a place of creativity, to forage, collect ingredients, have people stage, become experts in bark, plants or rocks, have the freedom to experience nature," he enthuses, promising evolutionary thinking. "You'll see the walls, something will happen with the walls."

You'll also see traditional earth ovens.

After that, he's back in Melbourne for the World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards in early April, only the second time the ceremony will be staged outside London. It was hosted by New York last year. Up or down, Martinez isn't overly interested in entertaining Central's placing this year.

For him, it simply reflects "the noise" he and other Peruvian chefs are making. "We work very closely to support the whole community to make people come to Lima," he says.

Central by Virgilio Martinez (with Nicholas Gill) is published by Phaidon, RRP $85