He is Mendoza, lost the accent of so much trajín for the world that goes with his prolonged beard and his pleasant smile. It seems hurried, but takes time. It does not run although the next day has a premium lunch in the Lot 8 olive groves where he obtains his exquisite oils and an important dinner in Gurisahis restaurant in La Juanita that left everyone speechless and wanting more last summer, and that this year he returned recharged and with Madrid clone to everything high. The clock stops when the theme is the family, Agustina, her children, food, enjoyment, moments, successes and failures … and fires. The fire and this chef are like an inseparable binomial. Maybe because the two look like. That element with both meaning in the spiritual and emotional. Transformation, renewal, passion, inner strength, creativity and inspiration. That was his career. Pure inspiration. Take the restaurant to the winery and now the match to the fires. The magic in the gathering. There is tradition, old forms and new winds in your apron. Gurisa is to enter another world. He is among his flames, he approaches the tables with his black pans and “his ineffable fried eggs with little things” in the form of truffles, always with that same smile, on a night when his heart, without anyone knowing, would prefer Be in another place. But there is old school in this passionate chef that still that day, is able to walk on fires.
News: He shows it familiar, where does this chef come from? Any chef in the family?
Lucas Bustos: Mother Mathematics, not very structured, of traditional and conservative family, and she . So my dad was in the care of some uncles in Mendoza. My dad’s family went to California so there was no reference. My dad also cooked very well. In addition, in my house there were times of fat cows and skinny cows. I never lived as a crisis as a boy. I also have four brothers with whom we grew together and two who appeared later because Dad, who had married young, had some children with whom it seems that he had memory problems and forgot to present them until several years later when my mother was already deceased My brothers are all professionals. A doctor, a dentist, an engineer and an economist, and I had to be a lawyer … but no.
News: Why did he become a chef?
BUSTOS: I went through seven schools. I asked to go to the bathroom and went home. Decidedly not fit into formal education. One day a Italian cook Franco Mazzini came, who sold ice to the Eskimos, to give a Course at the Plaza de Mendoza Hotel and my old men sent me a vocational test type, because they already knew that formal education was not for me. In the course there were 20 ladies and I, a 15 -year -old boy. The guy was traveling around the world, drank and ate bestial and had a great time. And I said that, I want to be me. Where do I notice? There were no kitchen schools in Mendoza and in the 90s those of Buenos Aires just started such as Rodríguez Palacios or the Dumas cat. I studied in Chile and I barely ended up doing a improvement program for hotel chains to the United States, but I deserted and traveled through Europe to make the internships of rigor.
News: Why did he come back?
BUSTOS: I always liked the idea of returning to work in Mendoza, and I got hooked with the issue of wine as a product that had potential in Mendoza and international projection.
News: He landed in 2001. A chaotic year for Argentina. How did it?
BUSTOS: Appalling! We did everything wrong. The restaurant was called Cadeau. We were twenty years old and with all our ego in tow, we put it for an audience of 50 to which we had no arrival. We put all the money and we did not make the initial investment. We lacked the heating in winter, we wrote the letter in French. I wanted to reproduce Alain Ducasse recipes. This implied very high fixed costs and complicated dishes for an impoverished country. I learned that anyone opens it, but that closing it is much more difficult. We barely last three years. And I lacked experience. I had read all the books, but I hadn’t tried all the dishes. I did everything wrong.
News: After such a failure, didn’t you want to go again?
BUSTOS: First we had to pay the broken dishes and I also continued with my dream of the restaurant in a warehouse that could not leave without trying. I started working hard with the Bianchi winery with the Stradella brothers who were large lords and friends who gave me space to do things. We made pairing in the Hyatt and I was like the false “chef of the winery.” I hit twenty doors and they didn’t attend me. Only at two years he can leave Jean Pierre Thibaud a folder, he received me and we put together Ruca Malen’s restaurant that was a success from day one. There I talked fifteen years without stopping.
News: The prophet in his land …
BUSTOS: Beyond Francis Mallmann in Escorihuela and some Zuccardi actions, gastronomy was not yet common in Mendoza wineries. Ruca Malen was clearly a turning point. After you have a restaurant where you are doing well, everyone forgets what you did wrong. They serve the awards you won, and nobody asks you how many restaurants melt.
News: And now you have three stories: one in Punta del Este, another in Spain and another in Mendoza …
BUSTOS: Other things happen to me because it has something wonderful, it has an absolutely reduced scale that is José Ignacio, which does not work the same as Punta del Este. Here you walk and everything is close. Everything is super relaxed. I have two daughters Catalina (12) and Mercedes (15), of my first marriage, who are in Mendoza and the smallest Bernardo (7) who is in Madrid with me and Agus, my wife. But now, the three are here with me. Mendoza is the origin, I already had all the restaurants that occurred to me and I love it because my family is from there. In Spain I left Galicia, we are in the process of selling the participation of restaurants and putting all that in the Gurisa in Madrid that we are going to open in March.
News: What do you like about that contrast between the countryside and the sea?
BUSTOS: I love that duplicity, but what I like most is fire. The fire as a ritual, and that of sharing. Put in the middle of the table and spoon. Food and life is that, like a fire that brings you closer and shared.
News: What would be your perfect menu?
BUSTOS: I do not believe that the kitchen is the important thing, but with who and that is where you fall into family and friends. I with whom I have fun eating is with my wife. And then I have my groups of friends with whom we share
News: A chef who excites him?
BUSTOS: A guy who excites me is Mallmann. I do not know him in person, but he is a guy that I have idealized, not because of his kitchen but for everything he generated.
News: Why Gurisa Madrid and not Buenos Aires?
BUSTOS: I was never a type of Buenos Aires. Today I am very happy in Madrid, which gastronomically is like playing the Champions League. Just as people are going to look for wines to Mendoza, they will look for flavors to Madrid, the Spanish public is highly qualified. In the last twenty years, Spanish chefs mixing tradition and avant -garde took the laurels. When I was a boy they were the French and today they are all Spanish. And you go to Madrid and all restaurants are all full because Spanish culture is all the time going to eat. That’s why I am so excited to be there, at least now.
News: He once told that part of his story has to do with news, and especially with this section.
BUSTOS: That’s how it is. When we were molten I saw in news a note in characters by Jean Pierre Thibaud, a son of French who studied mechanics, who had directed companies and did not take wine, but who had become the president of the Chandon wineries because his brother -in -law had died And they needed someone so that the Argentine subsidiary, who was the only one out of France, did not disappear. So he, who had nothing to do with the world of wine, in his ten years in the company multiplied the consumption of wine and put it at the top. And when his own winery, Ruca Malén was founded. Then I told myself: “This guy will understand me when I want to explain the restaurant in the winery.” I went to the warehouse by bicycle and left him a folder. A week he called me. And thus began the Ruca Malén restaurant that in 2013 was chosen ”Best Bodega Restaurant in the World” for the Global Best of Wine Tourism contest. For a character like Thibaud, who was encouraged to bet on a thin 20 -year -old, with an idea in his head.
