Rodolfo Guzman

Foto Brambilla-Serrani

Foto Brambilla-Serrani

Boragó

Av San Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer 5970
Santiago del Cile - Vitacura
Cile
+56222447568 e +56233235354
reservations@borago.cl

Forager, researcher, chef, all in one. In the sparkling Latin American scene, Rodolfo Guzman has one lucky star: Chile. A slip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, the country spreads over more than 4 thousands km of wild land, sometimes hostile, in the north, on the arid plateaux of the Atacama desert, in the south, with the luxurious green Patagonia. The geographic conditions create special microclimates and a unique biodiversity from which one can draw. Guzman is like his country, a complex character with two great passions: food and Chile.

Born and raised in Santiago, he flies to Spain after catering school, and arrives in the Basque kitchen at Mugaritz where in 2004 he works as apprentice next to Andoni Luis Aduriz. Here he develops some brilliant intuitions: one’s cultural heritage and the rediscovery of a territory must go through a strong wind of change. Once back in Chile, Guzman throws himself in the study of food from an anthropological point of view, collaborating in research groups with psychologists, nutritionists and neurologists so as to better understand the close connection between food, health and culture.

In 2006 it’s time to open the doors to Boragò, the exception in the colonial culinary tradition of Chile. Not exactly what Chilean people were expecting from fine dining, being used to oysters and foie gras: Guzman developed a menu that recalls deserts, forests, mountains and native traditions, exclusively based on indigenous ingredients, ancient cooking techniques taken from the Mapuche, with a contemporary technique twist. Today considered South America’s NomaBoragò found it hard at first to conquer the public. Then foreign journalists finally arrived and the restaurant jumped to the 5th place in the World’s Best South America in 2014, and from that moment on, things were easy (it’s now 4th in the same list).

Dining at Boragò is like a journey of discovery across Chile’s wildness. The dish includes nature, in elements: rocks and ice blend with seaweed, flowers, leaves, mushrooms, wild herbs, miming the appearance of earth and sea. It is no coincidence that the tasting menu available since the first day is called Endemica, and every dish is a discovery of unique flavours, far away from our comfort zone: indigenous, provocative, innovative.

While chefs all around the world agree with the importance of raw materials, not many of them have chosen to use only endemic products. Rodolfo Guzman and his team, made of over 200 collaborators, study each day and travel from one end of the country to the other, paying attention to microclimate and micro-seasons, so as to collect elements they’ll use in the kitchen, or to find new ones, helping local forage-based communities.

Capable of spotting 10 edible species in 2 square metres, Guzman collaborates with Universidad Cattolica de Santiago, with the mission of cataloguing every edible vegetal form in Chile, a long, hard and ambitious work, which will spread the word of sustainability and of the importance of the territory. Something that has never been as necessary. 

Has participated in

Identità Milano


by

Maria Vittoria Cervigni

on paper she's an architect. Like many other architects, she took a different path and now is a content writer based in Milan. She was born in Rome, on the day that the Smiths' "The Queen is Dead"  was out, and is fascinated by cuisine and its dynamics, hence she writes about it. She loves travelling