A quarter of a century ago, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube did not exist and television marked the daily pulse. The recipes were not learned in 30-second videos and the chefs were not influencers, but rather teachers who taught in front of only one possible screen. The word “gourmet” had another density: it referred to curious people, to sybarites. And it was in that less accelerated world where the elGourmet signal broke out.
The early times
From the beginning, the channel was presented with an aesthetic and a rhythm that did not exist on Latin American television. While the screen was dominated by frenetic magazines and the kitchen was just a practical segment, the signal opted for careful plans, recipes explained without haste and a broadcast of trade that returned solemnity and beauty to everyday cooking.
The first chefs who occupied that space formed a kind of founding generation. Dolli Irigoyen and Gato Dumas provided authority and presence; Francis Mallmann brought fire to an almost poetic register; Osvaldo Gross installed precision as a television value; Sister Bernarda brought the pastry shop closer; Donato de Santis brought the charm of Italian cuisine; Narda Lepes renewed the local recipe book and Iwao Komiyama opened the door to other cultures. It wasn’t just cooking on camera, it was building a culinary vision and sensitivity.
Over time, that spirit became a trademark. Verónica Rondinoni, programming director, sums it up as a difficult combination to maintain in an ecosystem that constantly changed.. He says that the challenge was always “to evolve without losing the values that made the channel: entertain, accompany and teach, even when consumption and the surrounding culture changed.”
The mark of a generation
Over the years, elGourmet stopped being just a thematic channel and became a place for training. Many of the chefs who today occupy the gastronomic conversation grew up looking at that screen. What began as a refuge for the curious ended up awakening vocations and expanding interest in cooking beyond the gourmet elites of the early 2000s.
Ximena Sáenz experienced it firsthand. “I am from the generation that was trained with elGourmet. It was aspirational. I admired those who cooked there and I learned by watching them,” she remembers. That early bond explains why today she perceives, on the other side of the screen, a similar affection in the public. For her, the connection is sustained because food creates a common code: “People have affection for those they see cooking. We prepare things that the other recognizes and that generates closeness.”
That emotional relationship became broader as the gastronomic audience grew and diversified. Rondinoni summarizes it without nostalgia: the public went from being a small gourmet group to a much more massive and demanding universe. Today, young foodies, ferment fans, defenders of kilometer zero and those looking for simple recipes for daily life coexist. Estefi Colombo sees it as a generational continuity: “Being here is entering a house where people who influenced an entire generation cooked. And now it’s our turn to accompany them with recipes that people really make and share.”
On the way
Another of the channel’s recognizable hallmarks was its way of narrating the territory. Long before the idea of “gastronomic trip” became a streaming categoryelGourmet was already traveling the country to tell how it is cooked in each place. Thus came formats that opened the screen to diverse landscapes and cultures. “La Ruta 40”, with Tupác Guantay traveling from north to south, ended up nominated for the Martín Fierro de Cable. The Petersen brothers explored PatagoniaCoast, Mexico and Chile. Julieta Oriolo took pasta to a historical dimension in Italy and Iwao Komiyama dismantled the foundations of sushi from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. That archive of tours today is part of television culinary memory.
This logic of movement also redefined the chefs’ experience in front of the camera. For Roberto Petersen, elGourmet was always a space different from the intense work of the professional kitchen, a place where he could “cook from enjoyment, creativity and play.” Ximena Sáenz identifies a deeper change in the way gastronomy is shown. In his new series about Buenos Aires snacks, he goes from the Alvear Hotel to modern establishments without staying in the kitchen, because food today is also told from the places, stories and aesthetics that surround it. That chef’s move to the city expanded the channel’s visual language.
Although the present requires dialogue with other screens – YouTube, TikTok and networks have multiplied narrative formats and times – the signal avoided parodying that speed. Estefi Colombo explains the difference: “TV has something that networks do not achieve: time. You can stop, show processes and accompany without rushing.” Rondinoni agrees and goes one step further, pointing out that platforms are not a threat, but rather a complement. That’s why, elGourmet today coexists with fast channels like “Dish of the Day” and “Sweet by elGourmet”and adds original content for audiences that move between cable, cell phone and streaming.
And the 2026 programming crystallizes that search. Tupác Guantay returns to the territory in “The Patagonian Sea Route”; The Petersens embark on a trip through Cuyo, the only region they needed to visit; Ximena presents ““Buenos Aires Snacks”exploring a deeply Argentine ritual; and Verónica Zumalacárregui expands the map with episodes recorded in Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna. In all cases, the thread is the same: a look that combines travel, product and story, adjusted to a multi-screen present but faithful to the spirit that defined the channel from the beginning.
Image gallery
