“I don't want to be a zero km chef. I don't even want to use ingredients that come from 100, 200, 1000 or 3000 km, I want to cook with ingredients that come from 4000 km, which can explore everything my country has to offer!”, so he says Rudolph Guzman, 41 years old, Capricorn, Chilean chef with 60.000 followers on Instagram, one of the most influential in Latin america, fourth in the ranking of the most important restaurants on the continent, with its Boragò and 42nd in the world list. His philosophy of endemic cuisine is entirely based on the exploitation of the opportunities that the climatic conditions and the characteristics of the Chilean territory can place at his disposal. Chile is long and narrow, between the Pacific Ocean and the Andean Cordillera. With over 4000 km of coastline, from the arid North of the Atacama Desert, up to the green and windy Patagonia and the ice surrounding Tierra del Fuego, before the Strait of Magellan.
The geographical conditions obviously create very different microclimates from north to south, with rare biodiversity and ingredients that are often little known. In his curriculum a degree in Chemical Engineering and Bioprocesses at the Catholic University of Chile and an experience at Mugaritz, in Spain, the restaurant of Andoni Luis Aduriz, Joan Roca's favourite. His passions are the science of health and his land, applied to cooking. “Our cuisine is not based on technique but on the flavors of a territory”.
Once back in Chile, Guzman dedicated himself to anthropological research and organic farming of his country, discovering everything that was edible. This is a trend that is also taking place in other parts of the Latin American continent, in Peru with Virgilio Martinez of Central in Lima, in Colombia with Alvaro Clavijo (El Chato – Bogotà). Collaborating in research groups with psychologists, nutritionists and neurologists to explore the close relationship between nutrition, health and culture, he has set up a network of 200 growers and producers who supply him with various ingredients from every corner of the country. It is possible that in 2 square meters you can find many different edible species, even unknown or little used. This is valuable work, not only for science, but for rediscovering a territory, a culture, a universe that teaches us the importance of resorting to what nature makes available to us, without the need to invent gastronomic shortcuts that can become , over time, dangerous, such as synthetic products, artificial flavors, chemical additives. Attention is paid not only to the land but also to the ocean, a very cold sea. We are more or less in the same situation as Norway. We are talking about 10° C and it is no coincidence that one of the finest salmon is caught here. However it is a totally different reality from the rest of the continent and that Chile can share to the maximum with Argentina which, however, is much less populated in the southern part. “Chile is a very dry country, says Guzman, the mountains reach almost 7 meters and there are valleys with unrepeatable conditions. I could name you millions of ingredients. To get an idea, we have more than 750 types of algae, mushrooms and wild fruits, saline plants, that is, plants that grow in conditions where there is salt, fish and seafood that exist only here.”
So dining at Boragò becomes a unique, impressive experience, like learning the history and culture of a country with every bite. Guzman blends the elements of nature: sand, rock and ice, with the plant world of algae, leaves, fruits, flowers, mushrooms. Wild and cultivated herbs that can be tasted only for a few weeks a year, change the seasonal menu, so each visit to the restaurant is a changing, different experience that adds up to the previous ones. His cuisine is called Endemic for this, it is exclusive, unique to a certain environment. Each dish refers to a particular area of the country, certainly different from the more traditional cuisines we know. It is therefore provocative, innovative, alienating, fascinating. “We always look back to move forward!” he loves repeating to his customers "...and we are a bit like the continuators of the Mapuche people, because we continue doing what they themselves once did!"
I remember that many years ago, talking to friends of Slow Food and other food enthusiasts, the restaurant was identified as the last link in a holy alliance between the farmer and the refiner producer. All three contributed to the defense of the territory and to its knowledge, none was less important than the other and thus Beppe Bigazzi's idea was born to found the Compagnia dell'Oste Custode, just as there were the farmer and the producer who kept the quality and wholesomeness of the product that was grown or bred according to precise rules and then transformed and placed in the restaurant industry to be exalted and not humiliated by trendy techniques and technologies which, in fact, have vanished over time. Rodolfo Guzman is, to all intents and purposes, an Host Custos who, among other things, collaborates with the Catholic University of Santiago, in the classification of all edible plant species discovered on Chilean soil. The difference between the Italian and the Chilean gastronomic tradition is that it has not been difficult to re-evaluate the traditional cuisine of the various regions of Italy, because they have never completely disappeared, even if they had to suffer attacks, from the food industry of the 60s -'70, but then those gastronomies reappeared stronger and more vital than before and today, the 20 Italian gastronomies have invaded the world with their diversity of ingredients and preparations. In Chile we have now come to rediscover this ancient culture which, following the Spanish occupation, had been swept away, even with the extermination of the Indian population. For Rodolfo Guzman the mixture between Europeans and Mapuche has instead formed an endemic Chilean character, which he also wants to rediscover through the kitchen, in its most identifying values and in its specificities.
Just 30 minutes from the restaurant, Guzman owns a biodynamic farm, which supplies him with vegetables, milk and duck, which he manages to introduce into his preparations such as duck hearts with blackberries and wild mushrooms. Boragó dishes are often colorful and made with local minerals such as volcanic stones, ceramics and more. The tasting menu costs 60 dollars per person, which is not cheap in the Chilean economy. An expense of 110 dollars must be budgeted for to taste the dishes of Boragò. We have to take into account the amount of work behind each dish and the fact that 40 people work in the kitchen to make 52 place settings. Not every day of the week it is possible to serve two lunches a day, even just keeping it open in the evening is already an enormous effort.
One of his most outstanding recipes is made with beef cooked for 40 hours. The meat, made very soft, is accompanied by a glaze of chacaca (sugar cane juice distillate) and common herbs. The conger eel also stands out, a fish from those seas, which is grilled and served with basil and mashed potatoes. Recently, algae from the Atacama desert have been used which were unknown before and whose flavors had never been tasted. Therefore, cooking is not only taste and pleasure but also discovery, surprise but not an end in itself, as in a dinner show by Ferran Adrià, but with the awareness of tasting something real, which exists in nature and which is part of your Earth. “For me, says Guzman, every ingredient is interesting. A seaweed has the same attraction as a piece of meat. I have no problem always and when it has been well prepared.”
I interviewed Rodolfo Guzman about some aspects of his activity. For example, how do you know that a new ingredient might be edible? Who helps you in this search?
“We have already been doing this research in the country for 13 years. So today it is an activity that runs very well, in a way that even we would not have expected. We realized this when we finished Boragò's book: "Coming from the South" in 2017. Being a very descriptive material, for the first 10 years we had to study and understand how to catalog and use all the products uncovered. It was an exciting job because Chile has one of the largest endemic pantries in the world”.
In essence, have you become biological researchers in practice?
“None of us wanted to be just a researcher, we only needed to do that job because there was no documentation about it. We have always moved according to three principles: knowing who we are, where we come from, what is around us. So we began to ask ourselves the problem of how to use all these new ingredients in the kitchen, just as Chilean cuisine took other directions, we began our own, completely different journey. It was necessary to know everything about these plants, from when to when they grew, how they were harvested correctly, who consumed them and how, what cooking method was to be used… So the experimentation was not only in research but also in experimentation to make them ingredients of power. In this way we have learned and obtained appreciable results and we always had little time, because the vast majority of ingredients grow seasonally and in a short space of time".
Couldn't the experience of other American countries help you?
“Unfortunately, the ingredients I'm talking about don't exist in other Latin American countries, thanks to a different geography that Chile has, compared to the rest of America. Just as nothing good happens in life, from night to morning, it took some time to make this experiment a work that covered the whole territory. This happened when we began to stimulate the farmers of the various regions to consider certain plants, to collect those that we had discovered to be edible, others that we knew were edible or simply that we remembered having tasted as children. In the beginning, the quantities were small and not sufficient to prepare a menu. We used those years to learn more about the collecting communities with which we now work systematically. At the same time, we have organized a system for collecting, selecting and transporting ingredients from all over the world to the restaurant. Something of a certain difficulty, if you consider the length of Chile from north to south".
How did you come to know, learn, document and understand the gastronomic use of these ingredients?
“First of all by listening. Trying to learn more from the farmers and locals. But biologists, anthropologists and botanists have also helped us to reconstruct dishes and the use of ingredients that belonged to the Indian culture (Mapuche), completely swept away by the Spanish conquest after 1500. We decided right from the start to become professional researchers. This meant learning from anyone who could give us useful information, disengaging us from any methodology or method we had known until then. Obviously we have collaborated with many people, but above all with those linked to the territory and the culture of the place".
How long did it take for customers to notice you and this peculiarity of endemic cuisine?
“In the years between 2006 and 2013 the restaurant was almost empty. It was difficult to experiment and meet the favor of customers, accustomed to another type of cuisine, more international. After 2013 the restaurant began to fill up more and more and this allowed us to enter a different dynamic. The speed of learning has increased on our part to understand how to use the new seasonal ingredients in our preparation of dishes. Today we have a group of people dedicated to this study in our research center."
You say look back to move forward. The concept is clear, to go back to tradition to try new paths. But you have to have a tradition. In your case, did you have to rediscover it?
“In a way yes. At least 90% of the Chilean population has Mapuche blood. We are a mix of cultures: Spanish and other Europeans and Indians. The Mapuche people have lived here for more than 12.000 years, one of the oldest cultures in the world. One of the most important things of our ancestral culture is the value of "eating", of the daily meal. Because in it we find united and developed the art of cooking, which is no more important than cultivating the land but rather is a cycle that must be understood as a united whole. You grow what you eat, a perfect cycle”.
How did you discover the ancient traditions of the Mapuche culture on the use of ingredients in cooking, given that centuries of silence and European colonialism have passed?
“Although they said in Chile that we don't have our own culture, until recently, that's not true. We have it and we carry it in our blood. That's great, since the Chilean ingredients, which many peoples have eaten for thousands of years, still grow intact in completely untouched soil. On the one hand we try to do exactly what the Mapuche did. However behind us there are more than 200 people, between the communities of gatherers and small producers, all over Chile and without them we would never have had the opportunity to give life to this learning process, which we have achieved and which today is our identity".
Could we say that the cuisine of Boragò is an ancient cuisine?
“Some might say that. Instead ours is tremendously contemporary. Without a doubt it is but at the same time it is not. Boragò does not obey any concept other than the continuation of our culture, which we consider immensely relevant for all of us".
How many ingredients have you discovered and used in the Boragò kitchen? And with what continuity can you use them?
“It would be impossible to describe all the ingredients, as we have already said, Chile is a huge endemic reserve, one of the largest in the world. I can give examples. From the end of summer until the end of autumn, which in Chile are reversed compared to the northern hemisphere, an innumerable quantity of wild fruits grow, with surprising flavor characteristics and some of these grow for a short time. Some are rare and grow in very cold soil, in a short summer, the same happens with the large quantity of mushrooms, herbs, sea bichos (insects), wild stems, edible flowers, which are like vegetables, for example the Copihue, the national flower, which we have pushed a lot as one of the new sylvan ingredients, of the native forests of the south. It is thought that there are only two types of Copihue and that it is an endangered flower. Thanks to our work we have certified 83 types of Copihue, for which extinction is very far away".
How do you manage to maintain a complex structure like Boragò and the research group, with 40 people in the kitchen and all the others? Can you clarify that?
“Even for me it is difficult to know how to do it... with only 52 seats in the hall. Yet I managed to carry on without partners. Not because I don't believe in synergy, on the contrary, I really value teamwork and collaboration. That's just how it happened in this case. For many times I feared disappearing from the map, closing the experience but instead in 2013 Boragò exploded, with a great success with the public and I am pleased to be able to say that 80% of our customers are Chilean, a great satisfaction for all we. Sometimes friends and clients ask me why we only have one restaurant, why aren't we spread across other regions? The answer is very simple: why do it? Sometimes we think that the most important value is the economy and this is undoubtedly important, only that in my case the most important value is knowledge and time. In fact, I continue to maintain that the greatest value is what we do every day and our way of cooking, as well as understanding our Chilean territory".
On the other hand, many wonder how it is possible that Boragò is such an inexpensive restaurant, if you consider that the tasting menu has 16 to 20 courses and costs just under 100 US dollars, with a lot of work behind it. But I am enthusiastic about the fact that I was saying before, about the influx of a mainly local, Chilean clientele in my restaurant. A fact that fascinates me, which goes beyond any other economic consideration, because I sincerely desire that the identity of the Chileans with their culture and their gastronomy and with our work will grow".
The amazing example of an endemic dessert: Espino Cileno dessert
In winter I like to make a dessert based on Espino Cileno, a plant that comes from the acacia family and grows in the mountains of the central area. No one has ever used it for cooking before. It is a very representative ingredient for us, because it is typical of our territory. At the end of winter, parasitic fruit, called quintrales, is seen growing from the tree, a type of fruit that grows for only 3-4 weeks. It's not easy to find it. It is only found at about 1000 meters, around Santiago. We don't use chocolate often, it's not our product, but I love the flavor of the Chilean espino and chocolate blend. It is a mixture of bitterness and smoke.
This time of year there's a lot going on in this tree at the same time, so doing something with what's going on at that time is kind of logical. Goats love to eat the parasitic fruits from the tree and we use their milk to make ice cream with the seeds of the tree. In this way we get a nice texture of goat milk and espino. On the bottom we put a chocolate preparation with the espino extract, which is very bitter, and the salted espino crumble (crumbled). We cook the carrots with the espino for a long time, then we dry them until we get the consistency of a bittersweet. At this time of year the tree also loses its pods which fall to the ground and, to get an idea of what they look like, we open the pods and take out the seeds. It's impossible to eat them – they're too hard and you could break your teeth! Instead of seeds we make a dry soufflé, covered with chocolate. Then we fill the pods with the seed-shaped chocolate-espino balls. We put it between the skewer of a piece of thorn, like parasites. You can crack the pod in dessert by using it not only as a topping but also to give a different texture to the dish.
An alternative to coffee
Unlike countries like Brazil and Colombia, Chile has a climate that is not suitable for growing coffee, so Boragó serves its own version of espresso, brewed from the fruit of a local tree called kirinka. The Mapuche people have been using it for 2000 years.
