Although my years in the city of Buenos Aires may have stolen my accent, I never stopped feeling that I had a debt to the country outside of the capital. It's like a tax that comes with ‘making it’ in the city. I was born in Mendoza and raised in San Luis, and undoubtedly, I can attest that to a large extent, ‘God serves in Buenos Aires’ (the phrase, in Spanish, ‘Dios atiende en Buenos Aires’). However, there is still much to be done. This has been one of my main driving forces when setting out to explore everything that encompasses our gastronomy. And when I say everything, I don't just mean the raw materials I later use in the kitchen, this is just a small part of what one brings back when traveling into the deep end.

Eight years ago, I had to travel to the Argentine province of Jujuy for a television program I was participating in. I had to interview some local producers. I remember Dominga in her house in the valley. She had apples I had never seen before, and Andean potatoes! I drooled over what she had in her backyard. “Why don't I have this in Buenos Aires?” I thought. Of course, along with that question, many more arose: why would I want to take them there when we are 3000 km away? Why would I take them to a fancy restaurant of all places? And because this is also Argentina, a country with vast natural resources but a struggling economy, it was a reality check for me.

The entire Northwest of the country has a special energy. Those days, I walked, talked, learned and saw more pre-Hispanic culture than in the neighbourhood where I live in the Capital. An experience that pulled me out of the centralist mindset that, if you're not careful, becomes a habit, even if you grew up outside of Buenos Aires. Each province and region is autonomous, but it's also all part of the same extension of territory. There’s a lot of ignorance going around regarding what happens beyond our immediate cities. I would even dare to say that Argentine’s know more about other foreign gastronomic cultures than their own, and I don't think that's a minor issue.

After returning from my trip, I knew that one of my main objectives as a professional was to bring the diner closer to the producer through the kitchen, seeking to make them aware of what their dish was made of. How each ingredient is treated according to the people who harvest, fish, or hunt for that product and most importantly to pay respect to the entire logistical process that it entails. The ‘innovative’ in me is not linked to technology or techniques, but in ensuring that the person coming to the restaurant leaves knowing what they ate, where it came from, and who cooked it, which happens much less frequently than we'd think.

In the following years, which fortunately continue to this day, I have been able to build the team with which we would travel in search of these connections. It's not easy — you have to have a structure that allows you to afford ‘the adventure’ and, when you find something that catches your attention, be able to bring it to your restaurant, considering the distances in a country like Argentina. This is why the connection with the producer is so important — being able to establish a bond. They are the only ones who know their product and will always have the best recommendations for transportation and conservation.

As I tell it, it seems that, in the end, I embarked on a path full of stones, and sometimes, but with great satisfaction, what we have found is impressive. We had the opportunity to work in the province of Entre Ríos with the INTA (National Institute of Agricultural Technology) on research about the development of rice in our country. We studied the product in depth in order to understand what its possibilities are within our territory. This allowed us to later visit a plantation in Chaco, which followed a way of producing that blew our minds. Teco is a rice producer and also produces the pacu fish species. Why? Because pacu is a river fish that, besides being herbivorous, eats snails — the biggest threat to rice fields. So, producing this fish species alongside the rice mitigates a problem that occurs worldwide in a natural way. Also, pacu droppings are an excellent fertiliser for the plantation. Without technology, fertilisers, or pesticides, just living nature.

Of course, just as you have producers who are specialists, you also encounter very harsh realities that, as a gastronomic professional, propel you to focus. This happens with fishing, for example, where most workers belong to a very marginalised social sector, working for a pittance that barely allows them to survive. In this context, knowledge about the raw materials is scarce unlike livestock farming, which has a series of protocols to care for animals during breeding, slaughtering, refrigerating the cuts, etc. On boats, fish suffocate due to a lack of water on the vessel that has been walked on by an entire crew and is not refrigerated at that moment or later. In the face of this, how is it that we, as chefs, expect to receive the best raw materials? It doesn't happen. There are a few families, no more than two or three generations, who are experts and know the entire territory, and they push beyond in order to deliver a top-notch product. It happened to us in Pehuen-có in the south of Buenos Aires province, where we met a community of traditional hook method fishermen who had vast knowledge of their craft.

There are many challenges to make what seem impossible happen but when the purpose is great, one finds a way. I lived many years in Europe, and although I did well, I returned to work in Argentina because the growth opportunities are infinite. We are a young country and our local gastronomy is even younger. Across the country, which covers many kilometres, I see precisely this — that we always eat the same thing regardless of the season without questioning whether what we are ingesting is a seasonal product, or if the tomatoes in the everyday salad have been in cold storage for months before reaching our homes. We are unaware of what our country produces.

This happens for many reasons, the first and foremost being education. I always say that I greatly admire athletes or high-performance sportspeople because they are the only people I have known so far who know precisely what foods and in what quantity they need to make their bodies perform. The rest, if they can afford it, learn when they are adults. And not to mention when, unfortunately, one has to ‘learn to eat’ because old habits have taken a toll on us. Another not insignificant fact is that, despite the incredible variety of products we have in the country thanks to the diversity of climates and soils along with the immense variety of gastronomic customs that characterise each of these regions, no cooking school offers ‘Argentine cuisine’ in their curriculum as such. As professionals, we don't know what happens two provinces away. We have quality and variety, and yet we are unaware.

In this scenario, most restaurants hook onto following a trend. They don't question themselves either because the business has been working well this way. Their menu hasn't changed for years, and week after week, those who can, always order the same thing. The French school since the 18th century has given the majority of Western gastronomic professionals a cooking system that actually comes from the military school where everyone's work is catalogued and standardised. Over the years and with the ‘evolution’ of both cooking and restaurants, combined with technological advances, changes in human resources, team dynamics, leadership, and the constant systematisation that ensures a faster delivery of everything, we generate the need to want everything resolved immediately. Today, in most places, the chef arrives at work and already has the vegetables cut from the night before, the bread is from yesterday, heated up a bit, and it works. Because the faster, the better, and in that agility, we lose quality and spontaneity — we are killing creativity. Contrary to what it seems, the act of cooking is actually done less and less.

Systematisation, thought of as the standardisation of processes to reduce costs, people, and inconveniences, kills the freshness that a restaurant can have. And if we kill the freshness, the natural, the possible mistake, we kill the experience of people who come to our restaurant. We deliver a closed package where everything is pre-established, scripted, and ends up lacking something as singular as what food generates — the experience of something unique and restorative. After all, is there anything better than a freshly made preparation? Something just finished — that bread that just came out of the oven and is placed in front of you for you to enjoy?

By no means do I want to be interpreted as someone who is anti-system, but quite the opposite. In this globalised and constantly moving world, work systems are gaining more and more traction. Restaurants that have or try to think and rethink their work outside of a single standardisation are the businesses that will most likely be able to convey their vision, philosophy, teachings, and learnings. And, above all, in Argentina, sustain themselves over the years and across the changing economies that we experience, not an insignificant fact. I really believe that the new luxuries, speaking of haute cuisine, involve being able to create experiences within the restaurant where each person who arrives feels unique. Where each preparation can be freshly made. That's why it's necessary to rethink how we cook, how we manage ourselves, how we process those resources, and, above all, how we work in symbiosis with the other people on the team. Each with a key and fundamental function for the development of a true culinary experience. That's why I never talk about ‘my travels,’ ‘my experiences,’ ‘my contact with the producers,’ but ‘our,’ ‘ours,’ because there is no way one can carry out a project like that alone. For me, the idea of the solitary chef is over.

Beyond what has been expressed previously, that is, the journey that still lies ahead, I am fortunate to see more and more gastronomic projects from the inside and to share with their creators, leaders, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople who seek to fulfil both their dream of having their own restaurant or business and that of creating a profitable venture. In parallel with the origin of the product and the producer's story, how they live, what their work means both for them and for the environment in which they live. Every day I seek ways to build symbiotic systems that generate a community full of professional feedback that provides employment, fulfils purposes, imparts knowledge, arouses doubts, and also resolves them: What am I eating? Why am I going to eat this? What other options do I have? Do I have other options? Why have I never had them at my disposal?

Every journey we undertake convinces me more of what we are doing, and the people who come to the restaurant leave impressed. Sometimes I get tired of hearing, and even saying, the word ‘experience’. It has become mainstream, but it is what makes the difference. It is neither more nor less than the sensation, the conscious and present experience of that moment, which is fundamental for me because I don't work purely to generate revenue. I do it because I believe that eating is one of the most important acts we do as humans. Without going any further, we need it to survive, and on top of that, we can create not only delicious but also varied food that serves as a vehicle for knowledge into other realities and, at times, can even help change them. 🐟