45 44 Nº 4 3 4 CURICÓ VALLEY AN INTERVIEW WITH Rodolfo Guzmán , THE COUNTRY’S MOST PIONEERING CHEF also feature in the top 100 of Latin America’s 50 Best list, demonstrating the level to which Santiago’s fine dining scene has taken off. But how did we get here? And what is Chilean about this emerging cuisine? According to Guzmán, traditional Chilean cuisine has an especially deep past. “Our natives have been around for the last 12,000 years in the land,” he says, pointing to the fact that the Spanish never fully conquered the terrain. Another main difference between Chile and other Latin American countries is that they were not agriculturists. “Their food was based on the native endemic ingredients,” Guzmán says. Chilean cuisine is deeply seasonal and shaped by the country’s unique geography, climate, and indigenous ingredients. The country’s diversity spans from north to south, driven by the Andes mountains and the cold Humboldt current along the coast. “In a way, it’s like an island,” Guzmán suggests, pointing to Chile’s high-altitude Andes and “ I never thought that we would reach something like this,” says Chef Rodolfo Guzmán, “people are traveling all over the world just to visit Boragó.” The chef’s restaurant in Santiago has been 29th on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for the last two years. Representing the heights of contemporary Chilean cuisine today, the current menu is called Endémica, and is completely devoted to showcasing Chile in every detail, with naturalistic plating that highlights the uniqueness of Chilean ingredients. There are many restaurants in Santiago taking on a Chile-centric approach to creative cooking. Pulpería Santa Elvira now features in the World’s 50 Best Discovery list, with the restaurant devoted to making its albacore pastrami and other fish charcuterie, and offering striking seafood dishes such as cream of clams with apricot bacon and pickled seaweed. Alongside this restaurant, Calma by Fredes, Olam, Yum Cha and Ambrosía WORDS J O E L H A RT PHOTOGRAPHY B O RAG Ó 47 46 Nº 4 3 4 CURICÓ VALLEY “you won’t see a single fine dining restaurant or bistro,” Guzmán says, “without a single Chilean original ingredient.” This dramatic shift in perspective means restaurants in Chile are now celebrating native ingredients, using them across the seasons and exploring their full potential. This change not only highlights the richness of Chilean flavours but also supports local producers and foraging communities, who have gained newfound recognition across the country. Guzmán’s Boragó was key to this process. They work with “more than 200 people between foraging communities, small producers from all over the country,” Guzmán explains, adding that they’ve been doing this from when the restaurant started Both dishes highlight the community and unique ingredients central to Chilean cuisine. Since the arrival of the Spanish, Chilean cuisine has blended native ingredients with Spanish traditions, particularly in urban areas like Santiago, resulting in dishes like tortilla al rescoldo, a traditional flatbread, and various types of empanadas. A few decades ago, Modern Chilean cuisine didn’t even highlight the city’s urban traditions, focusing instead on imported ingredients, as chefs and diners alike were drawn to international flavours, sometimes feeling that local ingredients were less prestigious. High-end restaurants showcased items like Japanese fish, and Italian prosciutto and burrata, but in the last decade, there’s been a sea change. Today, these ingredients to remain intact. What this means, Guzmán insists, is “to get to see all of the deep-rooted Chilean cuisine, you really have to go out of the capital.” Across the forest, mountains, and rocky coastline, there are ingredients unique to each region. As Guzmán remarks, “it’s extremely seasonal from north to south in so many ways. The way of cooking was just all based on these very unique ingredients.” One of the most beloved and traditional dishes across the country is called curanto. It involves a communal meal cooked in a pit layered with heated stones and native tepú wood, found only in Chiloé and parts of Patagonia. The dish is prepared by layering meats, fish, and seafood, covered by large nalca leaves that act like a pressure cooker, slow-cooking for 5-6 hours. Another traditional favourite is milcao, a fermented potato bread, and chuchum, a dough made from fermented potatoes, cooked slowly over embers on native wood and stuffed with seafood or other fillings. coastal geography, which result in many native ingredients found nowhere else. Rooted in traditions dating back 12,000 years, Chilean food culture emphasizes preservation techniques such as salazón (salting), encurtido (pickling), drying, and fermentation, each of which contributes distinctive flavours and textures to traditional dishes while extending their shelf life. One less typical form of preservation involves smoking using native woods, which add a distinctive flavour profile to traditional Chilean cuisine. Historical foraging and ingredient exchanges between coastal and mountain communities also contributed to Chile’s unique culinary evolution. Coastal areas provided seafood like merluza (hake) and spicy ají (chilli peppers), while mountain communities shared wild game such as guanaco and foraged fruits like murta (Chilean guava), resulting in a diverse and rich food tradition. The pristine quality of Chile’s land, largely untouched by intensive agriculture, allows J O E L H A R T U T H E R I S E O F C O N T E M P O R A R Y C H I L E A N C U I S I N E 49 48 Nº 4 3 4 CURICÓ VALLEY Reflecting on Boragó’s role in promoting Chilean cuisine, Guzmán recalls that “back in the days,” Chile wasn’t known as a food destination. People traveled to Chile for its landscapes, not for restaurants. Unlike Peru or Mexico, Chile had not “well-developed gastronomy for such a long time,” and many Chileans “never thought that we had a Chilean cuisine”. But Guzmán realized that most Chileans have indigenous, often Mapuche, heritage, which could inspire a unique culinary identity rooted in local ingredients. The increasing success of other fine dining restaurants can be put down to the influence of the Boragó ethos across the city. Boragó has allowed other chefs to take pride in their heritage and creatively contribute to a new vision of Chilean cuisine. With Boragó becoming one of the city’s key attractions, visitors to Santiago today get to taste the landscapes of the Atacama desert, Patagonia and Easter Island before they’ve even left the city. ‘wine pool,’ showcasing small family projects that capture unique terroirs across Chile. The Endémica menu is reflective mostly of seasonality. As Guzmán says, “Chile is all about windows, small windows of time.” The current menu showcases seasonal fruit, with dishes such as roasted winter apple filled with pajarito cream, seasoned with native spices and Chilean hazelnuts, paired with a walnut tart and topped with a rhubarb root emulsion. It also features dishes that poetically represent Chile’s central coast, such as fire- baked conger eel seasoned with halophyte flowers accompanied by a seaweed fudge and a caldillo de congrio broth. Some dishes are are like a sensory journey through a sub- region, with one dish featuring a progression of four marine cocktails that highlight distinct fish cuts—from kra-kra to yellowfin tuna— served with an emphasis on flavour contrasts, allowing diners to experience the unique taste of Easter Island’s waters while enjoying the interplay of fresh and aged elements. in a totally different way now, because it has so many ways of using flavours”. This is what’s led to a culinary approach at Boragó that’s multidimensional, exploring flavours in ways previously unimaginable, dynamically supported by their extended family of over 200 collaborators. A meal at Boragó today is completely reflective of how each component served is sourced with an unprecedented attention to local quality and sustainability. Water is collected from Patagonia’s rain to ensure purity, and the milk used for ice-cream is milked by the team. Vegetables are grown just 30 minutes from the restaurant, fish and seafood are sourced directly from fishermen. Instead of a conventional wine list, Boragó features a 18 years ago. “I traveled before opening the restaurant, all over the country just to see it with my own eyes,” he adds, and “to learn from producers, from natives.” The team actively sought knowledge from botanists and anthropologists, building a network of mentors and farmers who shared valuable insights on local ingredients, growing into a deeply supportive network that has shaped the restaurant’s identity. Guzmán draws an analogy with renaissance painters to explain how this has shaped the cuisine there. “When they started at the beginning, they were painting in 2D. Suddenly everything changed because of the Renaissance and discovering 3D,’ he says. “We think about and feel our land B O R A G Ó J O E L H A R T U T H E R I S E O F C O N T E M P O R A R Y C H I L E A N C U I S I N E