Her name is Julieta but they call her Chula. This is how everyone knows her in the gastronomic environment. She is a renowned pastry chef, chef Flowers, the busy Palermo restaurant. Their specialty, gluten-free pastries and the use of edible flowers.
“I am constantly looking for new recipes, new procedures, researching different flours to create products that are delicious and also aesthetic,” he reveals. Anyone who has tried his creations can attest.
“I am obsessive about work. I love challenges, the adrenaline that a challenge generates, doing something new, exploring, seeing how it turns out, how to solve mistakes. I like the inventive part of the pastryhow do I build a certain thing, be an architect at one point,” Chula assures NOTICIAS.
He worked in New York (Rosarito, Shelter and Dimes), with Fernando Trocca at Parador Santa Teresita and in the opening of his restaurant Orilla in Miami and also with Juliana López May. Today she shares a job and a partner with his boyfriend, Santiago Pérez, chef at Las Flores.
His grandfather, Roberto Galvez —car racer, leading figure in Road Tourism along with his brothers Juan and Oscar, who died in 2012—was his first teacher.
News: As a girl I wanted to be an actress.
“Chula” Gálvez: Yes, I studied a Bachelor’s Degree in Dramatic Arts, I did everything that had to be done to be an actress, singing, circus, I studied with the teachers that had to be studied. I had that desire very fixed and the kitchen was always like a place of relaxation. I am very sociable and I like to invite friends and cook.
News: Did you get to work as an actress?
Galvez: Yes, I worked on “La Jaula de las locas” with Puma Goity and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez on Corrientes Street. He also made several independent films, shorts and plays.
News: And how did you end up being a pastry chef?
Galvez: It was quite natural. Being an actress is a very difficult profession in terms of sustaining work and also financially, and I wanted to go live alone. Outside of acting work, I cooked and had my clients, I sold cakes, I did pop ups. Afterwards I had several jobs as a casting director, which I loved, but slowly baking began to gain much more importance in my life. There I decided to study cooking at the IAG (Argentine Institute of Gastronomy). Being a profession that I was never very excited about, that made me much freer and able to generate a personality in the kitchen. Don’t have fears. Let it be something of enjoyment and not a pressure.
News: Why did you choose the pastry shop?
Gálvez: Since I was little I had a very sweet tooth, but they didn’t let me buy sweets, they did let me cook. If I wanted to eat chocolate cookies I had to cook them. There I developed a palate, a taste for pastries. Besides, It is something that one can do and give as a gift and that also hooked me a lot. There is something of offering that I always liked a lot.
News: Why gluten free? Can’t you eat?
Galvez: No, three years ago I was declared gluten intolerant. There I made a change with my pastry shop.
News: What is the Las Flores pastry shop like?
Gálvez: We proposed that being gluten-free would not be a limitation for what we want to do.. We want to make a puff pastry, well, we are going to make the best gluten-free puff pastry and make sure that people who eat with gluten don’t notice. Those are our challenges and our goals. A negative point is that the costs to make this pastry are much higher. Outside of that, our intention is for the pastry to be very beautiful and to make you fall in love with its look and for the flavor to be very rich. I use a lot of edible flowers, sometimes I also use flower powder, hibiscus flower, rose flower, chamomile. Not only are they very beautiful, but they can also provide great flavors.
News: What are your basic ingredients, the ones that cannot be missing in your kitchen?
Galvez: Flour from some nuts, eggs, coconut and olive oil, 70% chocolate and flowers.
News: What would you recommend from the menu?
Galvez: The Clementine cake with cashew, tangerine or orange or kinotos flour, and a white chocolate and cream cheese cream. I would also recommend the vegan alfajor, which is a chocolate cookie, with two layers of chocolate, a peanut butter cream and a coconut dulce de leche center, dipped in dark chocolate. Then, let them try the puff pastry because it is a source of pride. I can’t believe the progress we’ve made in recent times. In fact, now those from the Basque Culinary Center are coming, a very prestigious gastronomy school in the Basque country, and they are interested in seeing these products that we are making.
News: What are the pluses and minuses of cooking?
Galvez: The nice thing is that you create a family because you are working with those people all the time. It is a profession that has a very important creative side, something alchemical that captures me a lot. It also has something magical, you put your energy into a product that is then consumed by others, something of an energy transformation that I love.. Especially when they are special orders, like a wedding cake. The negative is that you put your body a lot, you are standing for many hours; You work around the world, holidays, weekends; and you’re always dealing with clients. It is also difficult to form groups, there is a lot of turnover, and it is a business that never stops, it is always in motion. You can never completely disconnect.
News: What is it like working with your partner?
Galvez: We met Santi while opening Fernando Trocca’s Orilla in Miami. He loved watching us work and we always worked very well. Now we work together, we are a couple and we live together. That is the most difficult thing, we are seeing how to solve it, because we are talking about work all the time. It is important to sustain a life outside the couple in order to feed the couple. I take acting classes, I play tennis, I do yoga when I can, I cook for my friends, I really like cinema.
News: What inspires you?
Galvez: Acting classes with Nora Moseinco, a great teacher of creativity. Then I am very inspired by travel, going to museums, being in contact with nature.
News: What do you remember about your grandfather Roberto?
Gálvez: We had this cooking connection, he was my first teacher. He always cooked, he taught me, we cooked together. He was always seeing how to improve, he invented tools with what he had, he was very skilled, that always dazzled me and I try to recreate it. It was very inspiring for me.
News: Do you remember what they cooked?
Galvez: He really liked preserves and made a lot of quince paste, he loved it, he even added vitamin C to it so it wouldn’t oxidize. He also has pumpkin in syrup, a millimeter-cut Russian salad with homemade mayonnaise, and lots of jams. I helped him or cooked and took him to show him, so he could give me his return.
News: In addition to baking, she produces wines with her sister Agostina at the Hermanas Gálvez winery.
Galvez: Yes, my dad has had a vineyard for fifteen years, but he dedicated himself to selling grapes, and four years ago we started making wines ourselves. We made an orange tree, the Pedro Gimenez, a malbec, a bonarda and a malbec-bonarda with carbonic maceration. They are natural wines, with low intervention. Now we made another more aged one called Hijo Único, it is dad’s wine because he wanted one with a wood passage.
News: Where do you like to go when you travel?
Galvez: I lived in New York for two years and I always want to return. La Pedrera, in Uruguay, is another place that I love, I have been going since I was fifteen years old to rest. Then I am inspired to travel to different places to explore. Last year I was invited to have a meal in Dubai and I took the opportunity to visit a friend in Israel. I had never been to the Middle East and I loved the culture and the different flavors. Now I’m cooking with a lot of spices that I brought from there.
News: He also loves combining art with gastronomy.
Galvez: It’s what I enjoy the most. Last year I did an exhibition of edible lamps with Iluminaciones Agüero and in the end people ate them, it was very nice. I also did an exhibition at the Sívori Museum with the painter Nahuel Vecino. He makes bronze heads and we made several decapitated ones that were cakes, with chocolate, and the people also ate them. He was great. There is something very magical in these interventions, people go crazy.
News: Cooking is an art?
Galvez: I think so. When there is a direct creation and something that transforms, for me it is art.
News: What do you plan for this year?
Galvez: My first recipe book is coming, which is already finished, and I hope to present it before mid-year. Additionally, I want to set up my own studio to teach classes and cook for private clients. On the other hand, we moved the Las Flores production center three blocks from the restaurant, where we included a cafe and take-out bakery and pastry shop.
