She is a woman of several lives. Although she has long associated her name with the world of natural cooking, both for her flagship restaurant, mooias per his book “Kitchen with vibes” (Catapult) and its different workshops and consultancies, hers is not the story of the girl who has cooked since she was a girl and when she grows up she no longer sees another possible path. Or yes, because among her first memories is the intuitive cooking of her paternal grandmother, the one that was guided by flavors and aromas much more than by recipes. But by the time she finished school and had to decide what to study, she opted for Law and added a master’s degree in Finance, to practice as a bank lawyer. “I could tell the story of the renegade lawyer who hated her career, but I can’t lie, I loved it,” she recounts.
What happened in between was in 2001, with the economic crisis that made his work unfeasible even by law, since bank legal processes were suspended. And what had been brewing a few years ago, studying with the pioneers of natural cuisine in Buenos Aires and then traveling with one of her sisters to study at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York and graduate as a chef, soon found more space in your life. With a specialization in healthy eating and also the title of healthy coach, he honed in on that vein with his sister. But the beginnings were not so simple: “We were very pioneers in this, so we were not so understood,” she says.
News: Missed marketing?
Jessica Lekermann: Completely. I remember we were tested at Elgourmet and turned down. We had made a lentil terrine with beetroot sauce and they told us “this has no future”. And we came from seeing what was happening in New York, where you sat down in a restaurant and they made you choose between a vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free menu, with or without sugar… Luckily we always thought that there would be other people who would value it.
News: Is it true that she has been a vegetarian since she was 10 years old?
Lekerman: Yeah, but it wasn’t a decision, I just didn’t like meat. In my house they ate everything, but I rejected it, even on birthdays I would take out the hamburger and keep the bread, the lettuce and the tomato. At first my mom forced me to eat liver once a week, because of the iron, but my body gave it back to her, because she vomited it up… So she understood that it wasn’t the way to go.
News: And how did this influence your cooking?
Lekerman: I had a short period in which I was very fundamentalist, but not meat but organic. Nothing that had hormones or was genetically modified entered my house. It was at the time when I was trained abroad. But she did not transfer it to third parties, she did not try to convince, although she was convinced that vegetarian cuisine could be nutritionally good and complete.. My challenge as a cook was to show how rich she could be. She was very hippie-related, and she didn’t recognize me in that realm. She also saw a lentil stew and felt that she did not present herself visually. Something that is very important to me, and not because it is frivolous, but because the visual also has an energy. It is not for nothing that it is said that food enters through the eyes.
News: What did you dream for Möoi when you started thinking about it?
Lekerman: I began to gestate the ideas in a notebook and took photos of places and things that I liked. Everything you see in this first Möoi was done by me, from gluing the veneers to designing the lamps. That’s why when it worked and they told me about a second location I thought it was impossible, because I couldn’t do everything from scratch again. When I opened this initial they called me to decorate houses and offices, I couldn’t believe it!
News: It opened its first store 12 years ago and today it has 10. How do you make it “not a chain”, as you say?
Lekerman: I always manage them, even if they are franchises, like Salta. And in that case I don’t stop going every two months at least. I put a lot of soul into it. But I don’t need everything to be the same, on the contrary, I like that each one has his own spirit. Everyone shares the letter, but I’m being more flexible on that too; in Salta, for example, there are more native dishes.
News: And after all this time, did you see a change in the diet of society?
Lekerman: I think the younger generations are having it. From 25 to 30 changes are seen, from there up no. The rest I feel that they like to see that this change is there more than to choose it. They like that it is on the menu, but they choose the rib eye. And those who made the change were for some reason, either health or recommendation. But they are decisions. In fact, we started out by not selling sodas and then we incorporated them, because I prefer that each one be the one to choose if he wants to or not.
News: You studied to be a health coach many years ago, how do you see it being so fashionable today?
Lekerman: I love it, because it shows an interest in the way we eat. It’s not just the type of food, but going out of the typical caloric diet nutritionist. Understand that the change of diet is not always related to calories or losing weight. That was what brought about this trend, taking more charge of our health. Even though talking about healthy today is fashionable and even bastardized, because not everything in a diet is healthy.
News: What do you eat at home?
Lekerman: Of everything. My daughter Juana eats meat, for example. I have always talked a lot about the danger of childhood obesity, we are the country with the highest obesity in children in Latin America. My conclusion regarding food in general is that what is forbidden generates desire. And if we are talking about boys, even worse, because they have many years ahead of them. When Juana was little, she used to say that she liked the cookies with smiles, because they gave them to her in the rolling garden, so I bought them at home and without making much of a fuss I put them in the pantry. When she saw that we bought them and it was something natural, she stopped generating interest. I always conveyed to her that everything in her right measure is fine. There is no food that will save your life and none that will kill you. It all has to do with daily and everyday food. Many times I am asked why there are no children’s letters in Möoi, and I don’t believe in that. On the menu there is meat, fish, pasta, sandwiches, toasties, you can eat everything! In the end, the children’s menu consists of nuggets, pizza, hamburger… I prefer that they adapt what is on the menu.
