Cocina Sin Fronteras

This Saturday, August 10, Buenos Aires sees the return of what may be the ultimate Latin American pop-up project: Cocina Sin Fronteras (Cuisine without Borders). An inspiring new project by Chef Fernando Rivarola of El Baqueano in San Telmo, Cocina Sin Fronteras dreams of a continent freed from the dotted lines that geopolitics tends to scribble on the mountains, rivers, and jungles that chefs look to as larders. For the project, chefs visit El Baqueano, bringing with them some of their favorite ingredients, and create a new menu that showcases their talent and cuisine.

Argentina has for a long time suffered from a certain gastronomic narcissism, with very little curiosity about the goings on outside, while those in the exterior see Argentina as little more than a country of beef and Malbec. The project aims to build on a growing network of highly-skilled chefs throughout South America, encouraging an interchange of vision, ingredients, and kitchen culture. Rivarola saw a lack of this kind of exchange between Argentina and the exterior and hopes that his project will prove to be a catalyst on both sides. Rivarola also entertains a goal that is shared by a growing number of chefs: using fine cuisine as a tool for social development. Although a top level restaurant with a tasting menu seems to be in a realm completely removed from the average man on the street, the effects of a successful culinary culture can create a chain of employment and sustainable support that reaches through multiple levels of society from the restaurant doors to the farms.

Up next, who’s joining Cocina sin Fronteras and how you can sample a dish…

This is a belief shared rather enthusiastically by Alex Atala and so it is no surprise that he has become a sort of godfather figure to the project. For the fifth pop-up event in July, Atala took over the kitchen at El Baqueano. On hosting some of the best chefs of the continent, mostly Brazilian but also from Peru, Chile, Colombia and even as far off as Mexico, Rivarola says: “The most exciting of all this for me is to get to know and work with chefs that I admire and respect as professionals, their ideas, their concerns, their projections and of course exchange thoughts and ideas of where we believe gastronomy is going. It’s like you’re an amateur football player and you invite the biggest names in football to come and play a game in your backyard and the Messis, the Ronaldos, they all come and play without asking anything in return, just for the hell of it, for love, for art.”

El Baqueano is an obvious choice for this kind of project as it has long been on the forefront of investigative cooking in Argentina. Rivarola and his partner and sommelier Gabriela Lafuente have created a tasting menu consisting of only indigenous meats, seafood and culinary obscurities left forgotten in the interior, or ‘the provinces’ as many porteños refer to the dark spot on the map that denotes any region outside of Buenos Aires.

Visiting chefs of the Cocineros Sin Fronteras project bring along a suitcase of goodies that they use to re-create their iconic dishes for the night’s tasting menu. Free to dip into El Baqueano’s treasure trove as well, working with Rivarola, chefs often wind up creating inventive fusion cuisine on the spot.

Details:

10-course tasting menu created by Alberto Landgraf of Epicee, Sao Paulo

Price per person: ARG$ 450 / US$ 85

Location: Restaurant El Baqueano, Chile 499, San Telmo, Buenos Aires
Tel: (+54) 11 4342 -0802

Upcoming Events 2013:

September – Pol Lykan and Dante Liporace (Freud & Fhaler – Tarquino – Bs. As.)

October – Virgilio Martínez (Central – Lima – Perú),

November – Patricio Negro (Sarasanegro – Mar del Plata – Argentina)

December – Leo Choi and Arturo Fernandez (Kaeshi I + D Cocina, Bs. As. – Ambrosía del Bosque – DF. – México)

Chefs Confirmed for 2014:

Ráphael Despirite (Marcel – SP – Brasil); Rodolfo Guzmán (Boragó – Chile); Helena Rizzo (Maní – SP – Brasil); Matías Palomo (Sukalde – Chile); Roberta Sudbrack (Sudbrack – Río de Janeiro – Brasil); Santiago Macías (I Latina – Bs.As. & Colombia); Caué Tessutto (A Peixaría – SP – Brasil); Darío Gualtieri (Casa Umare – Bs. As.); Juan Manuel