More than twenty years ago he had the plan to move with her husband to Germany. But first, he traveled to Tilcara to advise a relative who planned to open a business. It was in a historical corner where a general bouquet warehouse had worked that, by stirring the front poster, revealed its original name: The new progress. The same one that his grandfather’s warehouse had had in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Pueyrredón.
Florence believes that it was a first sign that this northern escape would change everything in his life. The European project and its political science studies were set aside, who had summoned it followed another path and she adopted the Humahuaca creek- already that precise corner- as its place in the world.
More than 2,400 meters high and surrounded by mountains that guard millenary secrets, there is a kitchen where the fire not only transforms ingredients, but also stories. Flor, as everyone knows her in the town, has become an unavoidable figure of Argentine cuisine. His art is not expressed only in the dishes he creates, but in the way he values the past, territory and his memoirs.
The new cooking + art progress, the restaurant that opened in 2003 with her husband plastic artist Fernando Fernández is, more than a place to eat, a sensory manifesto. The letter, changing such as stations, is exclusively nourished by Jujeño products: flame, charqui, quinoa, high trout, maimará flowers, salt from the large salt, multicolored maize, homemade cheeses and Andean potatoes. Each dish is a visual and gustatory essay on time, territory and ways to inhabit it. That search led her to work next to the archaeologist Carolina Rivet in an investigation into pre -Columbian foods and traditional culinary techniques to aggiornar the Andean legacy and take it to the table.
News: How do local culture rituals appear in their dishes?
Florencia Rodríguez: They are always present in my kitchen. Not only the rituals but the landscape, the hills, all that is part of the inspiration of our dishes. The landscape and the people around it. In the creative process there are many things that come to me I don’t know where. It is an intuition for the combination of flavors, colors and textures that reflect Jujuy. I want people to feel that they are eating a bit of the Humahuaca creek.
News: Do you have a definition for your kitchen? Are there traces of your Buenos Aires identity in what it does?
Rodríguez: My kitchen is linked to cyclical time and basically has to do with Andean products, but it is also marked by immigration influences. It is a living culture that changes and transforms without removing its essence. Not only because of the ingredients but also by the cooking techniques that I try to rekindle: the smoked, the salty, the dry ones, the Kalapurka (N. of the R.: Andean soup species), those wrapped in mud, and also the presentation of the dishes, which includes chalas, fumes, saumos.
News: What were the ingredients of the Humahuaca ravine that surprised her most?
Rodríguez: The ingredients that surprised me the most as soon as I arrived in Jujuy were the popes, the tubers in general, the different types of quinoas, the maize, the yuyos, which are a separate world; Medicinal herbs that are also used in gastronomy and very deep flavors of the earth that do not exist in other places. But above all I was fascinated by the agricultural ritual calendar that is handled here, with products that transcend us more than ten thousand years ago.
News: Unlike the way in which the raw material of kitchens in large cities is accessed. Do you have a direct link with the producers?
Rodríguez: Yes, totally. While cooking in many other places, my first restaurant is the new progress and is two blocks from the Tilcara market. When I started, only what was there, but now I could incorporate products from other Jujuy regions such as the Yungas and the valleys. I linked to small producers and others that have a bit larger terroir.
News: What were the best teachings you received cooking in Tilcara and who gave them?
Rodríguez: The most important thing I learned is how an ancient people continue to maintain their food and try to honor that. I also learned to use each product at its station. And to realize that the kitchen is not only to nourish itself but has to do with something much deeper linked to rituality and to keep a story alive. They were the lessons of the ladies who always cook here, who understand this culture as nobody.
News: Is cultural militancy from the kitchen?
Rodríguez: For me it is already very difficult to cook otherwise. Even when I travel to other restaurants in the world, I try to bring local products to know each other and yes, they already reference to that.
Export. In 2021, Rodríguez won the Prix Baron B – Édition Cuisine, a prize that recognizes excellence and innovation in gastronomy. With that recognition came the possibility of traveling to France, where he made a internship in Mirazur, the Triestrellado restaurant of Mauro Collagreco in Menton. He is also an executive chef of the Inkillay restaurant, of the Yacoraite vineyards (next to the hill of the ravine that bears the same name), and advises wineries and hotels that seek to develop concepts with identity, coherence and soul. In addition, as a jury of the Federal Chefs Federal Tournament, it contributes to visible and professionalize national cuisine.
News: What place occupy regional kitchens, such as La Norteña, in global gastronomic trends?
Rodríguez: The future or, in reality, the vision of current gastronomy has a lot to do with regional gastronomies. The great chefs have their eyes on sustainability, in the quality resources that are achieved in the place where we cook as a way to protect them, because clearly doing that gastronomy becomes circular and makes sense not only for us but for all the people involved in obtaining those foods. Technology is also key to optimizing products. And another thing that seems fundamental to me is the work together with botanists, archaeologists, anthropologists, nutritionists.
News: There is always talk of machismo in professional kitchens. How are we in Argentina?
Rodríguez: He changed a lot since when I started working. The work environment was not only led, but surrounded by men and the truth is that they didn’t like a woman in the kitchen. There was a feeling of “this is not going to be banked, they are weak, hysterical.” But now, although in places of privilege, as in the big prizes, many more men look, women are gaining visibility. I think it has to do with overcoming a worldwide dynamic in which in many cases women still gain less, or they doubt their abilities to lead, but it is already widely demonstrated that creativity, passion and constant work have nothing to do with being male or woman. Personally I work with mixed equipment. I think women provide another sensitivity, another way of seeing and commanding. But I don’t think about daily if I am winning or drawing a man. I don’t have to try the other way or prove double as at the beginning. The same in large kitchens you can always find someone to accompany you in the process.
News: And at home, who cooks?
Rodríguez: In my house it depends on what, we cook the two. My husband loves to make sauces, meats, but not cook all the time. In addition I am much more obsessive and orderly. Fernando is an artist and … It shows when cooking.
News: What ingredient can not be missing?
Rodríguez: Extra things. Because the simplest dish looks with a seasoning, a wide one. The star ingredients are that detail that enhances the taste of natural products. I have many preferred aromas and each one joins the gift of another simple flavor like a pope, which I love them.
News: What is your next dream?
Rodríguez: I have a very big dream that is very difficult to specify: an interdisciplinary school, but I think I will achieve it. It has to do with adolescents and issues that make me think about the future, to continue learning and continue teaching. My dream is also to continue holding a restaurant that turns 22, in a town, different from everything people know. It is a dream and a pride. That is why I decided to celebrate the anniversary with a super celebration in thanks to everything we live in Tilcara. It will be the first edition of a festival that we baptize dinerism (on August 17 from noon, in the Plaza Chica de Tilcara) and will integrate art, culture, gastronomy, design and music, and we will also be launching our wine, new progress.
Before and after the party, this contemporary alchemist that combines ancestral knowledge with a Buenos Aires look, will continue to insist that the kitchen can be a sacred act, a vital space of creation, introspection and resistance.
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