This oven is the soul of a house, and its island format makes it the heart of a home, because it gathers the family around and assists with socio-cultural bonding. A place governed by women, who dominate the entire space, the techniques, flavours and knowledge that have been handed down from generation to generation. 

The oven is used to apply more than 16 food preparation and conservation techniques, and it is also a pre-Hispanic inheritance, since archaeological surveys have discovered ovens that are over 5,000 years old. This is a place of ethnographic connections and a range of cultural manifestations and expressions of food sovereignty, and so Manabí Food has been declared part of the Cultural Non-Material Heritage of Ecuador.