Top Chilean chef on foraging for food, surviving in the industry and sacrifical lambs
Rodolfo Guzmán, the chef behind Chile’s Boragó, which is ranked 42 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, talks about how his food, foraged from all over the country, is a celebration of Chilean culture
How did you become a chef? “I just ended up doing it. My mother took very good care of what we ate. We grew up between the country and the city. We drank raw milk straight from a cow and, for my grandma’s birthday, lambs were sacrificed – nowadays, that would be very wrong, but at the time it was very normal in the countryside.”
Boragó is all about foraging. Tell us about that. “At least 95 per cent of our ingredients are from the field. We have more than 200 people helping us forage all over the country, in Patagonia, in the mountains, and around the mountains in Santiago. I really like halophytes, seaweed, fruit, mushrooms, fish, any kind of sea creature. I love the animals.”
What does Boragó mean? “It’s about continuation. Imagine waiting for the whole year for an ingredient that grows only three weeks of the year, and you know the person harvesting it will cut it perfectly for you, and send it to you in a beautiful box like they do in Japan. Meanwhile, the restaurant is booked with guests from all over the world, and from Chile, to see what you’re going to have.”
