“But there’s one thing that’s even more important than knowledge to us—that is imagination. It is absolutely unlimited. Rather than being better than other restaurants, we believe that Boragó is very unique in the world,“ he says. “What you see here, you’re not going to be able to see it somewhere else.” “We started from zero to cooking this beautiful rockfish… that took us 10 years to learn how to cook it. For sure you have to cry, come on!” he says with a laugh. He is equally passionate and optimistic when it comes to our post-pandemic future. “We have to rethink our operations, [try] to be more efficient economic- wise because of the service,” Chef Guzmán says. “We can move forward. It’s still going to be tough but after that, it’s going to be good. We’re gonna re-do it. We love that. For sure, that’s part of our society.”
food groups: seaweeds, halophytes (salt-tolerant plants that can grow without soil), small fishes like Chilean anchovies, and fungi/microbes that Chef Guzmán is the most famous for. And after all these accomplishments, he feels different now. “It took me a long time just to really realize, really that the restaurant changed [and became successful],” he says. He is also very confident in their culinary approach now. “We know exactly what the Mapuches [knew] about our land. What is the difference between that plant in the beginning, the middle, and the end of the season,” he says. “It is the continuation of the Mapuche [culture], because behind the restaurant, there are more than two hundred people between foraging communities and small producers from the entire country. It is just a path to quality which is different.” It made him realize the truth in what the Mapuches say: when you’re cooking, somebody is cutting from the ground. One is not more important than the other. It also means that Boragó has a lot of tools in its arsenal— one individual ingredient used to represent a single possibility. “But nowadays, one ingredient means three hundred possibilities at least,” Chef Guzmán says. Despite all the great Latin American cuisines around Chile, Boragó never tries to stand out. “We try to be ourselves and to be connected to that learning process,” Chef Guzmán says. “The path of finding new possibilities for every single ingredient, to make it special. Knowledge is probably the most important thing in the world because throughout our history in humanity it allows us to move forward,”
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