The restaurant is a way of life, it is also a business, but it is a vocation, who would like to work all night at any date? Having a restaurant is like dedicating yourself to medicine or journalism, you live for that. Could you do something else? Of course, but in the end you end up doing what you feel, he says Pablo Riverogastronomic businessman and sommelier, creator of the mythical Don Julio and of The favorite.
These days Pablo Rivero integrates for the third time the jury of the PRIX BARON B EDITION CUISINE In the company of star names such as Mauro Colagreco, Mexican chef Daniela Soto-Innes and Gonzalo Aramburu who will announce the winning projects of this seventh edition at the end of August. Meanwhile travel the room, check the glasses and review your experiences on the gastronomic industry that will reflect in its first book “loved by existing.” The title would be a great name for a wine.
Rivero, chosen as the best sommelier in the world 2024 by The World ‘S 50 Best, also counts to his credit with Don Julio as the best restaurant in Latin America in 2020, 2024 and 2025, two years ago he also reached the world top ten. There is a saying that says “It doesn’t matter what time you go through the door, there is always a line in Don Julio” and popular knowledge is never wrong. Pablo Rivero gives faith, Don Julio cooked over low heat, blessed by the love of neighbors and friends.
If there are so many grills, why this cult of Don Julio? It’s like asking why we fascinates the Pacino having so many actors. Who lived it does not need an answer.
News: The Prix Baron B Edition Cuisine highlights the value of identity, that of an Argentine and federal kitchen, how does that premise translate into practice?
Pablo Rivero: To deepen in Argentine cuisine is to work on identity and in the background on culture. The restaurants fulfill a cultural function, it is to show what you eat here, we talk about our territory and also what happened to us as a society. If you have to put in a primary school cover to the kitchen, where do you locate it? In social sciences. I believe that restaurants are archives of the history of a place and also the reflection of our time, beyond fashions or nationalisms. The idea is to encourage cooks and young cooks to build tomorrow’s cuisine expressing what happens to us today in Argentina and also in other parts, here there are people who work on their roots from a restaurant of Korean, Jewish or Venezuelan cuisine. In the Prix, particularly, we are very interested in highlighting the link with the local producer, in the search for our identity.
News: When one thinks what things ate as a boy and which ones he eats now, there is a tour that expresses who we are. How much is the story itself when imagining a restaurant?
Rivero: The restaurant is a personal entrepreneurship, that is the way I perceive it, some will see it as a business or an opportunity to provide entertainment, but for me the restaurants are the houses of the people, in fact a good restaurant is a cluster of people causing you to pass it well. The best when you go to someone’s house is a unique, genuine place, always the kitchen and the proposal speak of one and after a while you are realizing how you can convey about what happened to you in life.
News: He mentioned the fact of being genuine, in these times of marketing, post -truth and recommenders, what value does honesty have?
Rivero: The commitment to truth is fundamental in a restaurant because there are issues that were added to quality and that were not very valued before. One is the responsibility, you need good raw material, good processes, good execution and also a good staging. The concept of singularity is central and is anchored in what happens to you such as restaurant, cook or sommelier, because somehow your work is to show you in your essence, undress your truth. That uniqueness is what makes certain restaurants interesting, it makes you want to accompany them, to follow the evolution in the careers and in the lives of those who do them.
News: Is it like following an artist since its inception? Listen to the complete Bowie discography, for example
Rivero: (He laughs) I love that, because you discover new things from a chef whom you have known for 20 years, seeing how that person could be transformed is amazing. Yes, it is very similar to what happens with musicians, it is spectacular to follow the line of their art from the 80s to today, for example. In that sense, a restaurant is very close to a work of art because it reflects what is going through over time, that is our mission, being a mirror of the needs of society.
News: It became clear that accompanying the story of a restaurant is like seeing a cycle dedicated to a director. What would your filmography be like?
Rivero: Well, I don’t know, I do a lot of therapy and my analyst sends me to see cinema, let’s see what I can tell (laughs). Don Julio would be a cycle of several films, which passed here and also the ones I lived. The highlight of this filmography would be that he started with a 19 -year -old boy and his family until he reached this present that is the same, but on the other side, because my children have already started living the restaurant from work. Many films that I have fantasized I could transform them into reality, specify them in the living room and in the kitchen to reach the client. In this activity dreaming and making the film is fundamental. Imagine what can happen to the other when it comes to eat to your place and then achieve it is enormous satisfaction, that is one of the things that make this vocation addictive.
News: You were chosen best sommelier 2024. In an era of increasingly ephemeral consumption working with guard wines is an almost countercultural concept?
Rivero: The first thing to clarify is that a group of people says that one is the best transmitter of the work of the producers, these people apparently liked to show an arc of life stories present in a bottle. This recognition is impossible without the work of others and the level of Argentine wine producers. 27 years ago I dedicate myself to the activity, I spent traveling and wearing our wines, many times they liked, but the unknown they always raised was: “We will see what will happen in the future.” They ended up going down that message, which were wines to take now, the only ones destined for longevity and the potential to transform into that celestial body that is a wine that goes from earth to heaven through time for them were the Europeans, many colleagues already filled us with anger. So we find a way to look for these wines to keep them and today the world has learned that Argentine wine is super long. With respect to the countercultural something curious happens: the vast majority of countries have consumed their wines of the fifties, the sixties and sixties, but we still have in good quantity, at least here in Don Julio. Today the taba turned around, we have what they do not have, it is a moment of sweet revenge (laughs)
News: How much does one take the wine that one kept?
Rivero: Saving wines is a passion and as such it has part of pathos, to suffer. There is a kind of hysteria, one buys a wine that knows that it is spectacular, wants to keep it to take it at the best time and refuse to open it even when you want to pay it. You have the capital there, capable of the restaurant is not good, but you keep keeping it, it is contradicted by what you need. But one day you open it, you share it and in many cases without a commercial situation.
News: Does the surplus value have more to do with love than with the ticket?
Rivero: When someone shares you a wine that has kept you are living a very personal situation of those who kept it because there is no value for that. In some Argentine wines the value that the guard can have transforms it into an impossible nonsense. Of course, they charge, but what you added to that product, which is time, will never be able to pay you. Selling a saved wine is difficult because you have to look at which person you open it, who do you sell it to, who can pay it? That is never the variable and I do not make myself the one that does not interest the money, but the one dedicated to the guard knows that the reward is another.
