When, in early 2022, Thomas Treschanski opened his restaurant in Buenos Aires, no one had heard his name. Trescha, that’s what he called it, it was a big bet. A haute cuisine restaurant with a sophisticated test kitchen, a bar for ten guests and a multi-course proposal with expensive pairings, at a time when fine dining seemed to be disappearing from the Buenos Aires map, thanks to a dying economy. Tomás stood up and said: “it’s possible, there is an audience for everything.” And he was not wrong. In the distribution of decorations from the Michelin guide, Trescha took one star – the only restaurant in Buenos Aires, apart from the famous Don Julio – and Tomás personally won the star Young Chefan award that no one knew they would award.
News: What was it like re-entering Trescha with the two stars? What was the team’s reaction?
Tomas Treschanski: It’s definitely a dream come true. Four hours after the announcement, the entire restaurant had already been filled for two months. We have a waiting list every day. We went from having to invite friends so that the room is not so empty, to having to tell people that there is no room. We are a team of 25 people, most of us have been there since the opening, and opening a restaurant involves a lot of work and sacrifice, so the stars were a very nice pampering and a great motivation to continue working.
News: What was your journey in gastronomy like until you arrived at Trescha, your first restaurant?
Treschanski: I finished high school at 17 and went to study abroad, at the Cordon Bleu in London. Then I was all over Europe doing internships and working in restaurants with two or three Michelin stars. Barrafina and Fat Duck, in London, from there I went to Spain to Azurmendi, then to Denmark, to 108, which was like the little brother of Noma, which closed, then I was in Frantzén in Sweden and finally in Boragó in Chile, which It was the only one that didn’t have a star. In total I was away for 6 and a half years and I came back with hundreds of thousands of ideas about what I would like to experience when I am on the other side, as a diner. In Europe, all the money I saved working I spent going to fine dining restaurants.
News: Tell us some of those ideas: what is Trescha like?
Treschanski: All of us who work have the same role: the cooks, the sommeliers, the bar people. The chefs themselves serve and explain the dishes they worked on, we finish them in front of the diner. The sommeliers do all the service from the front, not from the back, for me it was very important that the wines and the pairing have a leading role. It is a service that is generated 100% within the kitchen, in fact 90% of the restaurant space is a kitchen. The living room is 10 square meters. The approach was always that, to have a lot of space to develop what we do and then have people come and try it.
News: And what do they do in the test kitchen?
Treschanski: It is a space to give room for error. We seek to make mistakes, work without limits and without borders until finally obtaining positive results in the final dishes.. We do some “experiments” related to ancient cuisine, such as ferments, and others with technology. We have a centrifuge, which separates solids from liquids; and a roto evaporator, which is basically a vacuum cleaner, which allows you to extract aromas from any ingredient that is infused in an alcohol and be able to extract the aroma without losing the vital characteristics of the product.
News: How would you define your cuisine? What are your influences?
Treschanski: Me I don’t like to limit myself and say what I do Italian, Spanish, or French cuisine. We have our own identity, our own cuisine which can only be eaten here in Trescha and nowhere else. You may like it more or less, but our goal is always for it to have a distinct personality. Yes, technically it has a French base, with something Nordic, something Asian. Obviously the idea is that the menu has a common thread and something to tell behind it, but there is something about working with whatever comes to mind that I find very interesting.
News: Do you feel that Trescha tells something about the identity of Argentine cuisine?
Treschanski: We do not make Argentine food but we are a restaurant with Argentine products. 99% of all the products we work with are from here and today, since we started working, we already work with 430 Argentine producers, so there is a fairly important effort to be able to show the product that the country has, which is very Well. What we lack is transportation and the means to distribute it.
News: What is Trescha’s menu like?
Treschanski: There are 14 steps, there is constant movement in the menu. There are snacks, smaller dishes, larger dishes, cold dishes, hot dishes, dishes that mix temperatures. The idea is that the menu is something playful, that leaves the traditional scheme of starter, main course and dessert, an order that is still a social concept that I think is good to break that paradigm. Now, for example, we are going to open with a snack that is going to be ice cream… salty.
News: What product or technique is your favorite right now?
Treschanski: I am very anxious and I like to change a lot so the last one is always the best for me. The last one we put on the menu is a tongue with chimichurri, fed as if it were a mole, so the flavor changes week by week. It is a dish with quite strong roots in Argentina.
News: What experience in Europe was a turning point in your way of thinking about gastronomy?
Treschanski: I feel that The most important thing I learned was not so much to cook, because I believe that cooking is something very personal, but rather a work methodology.. When I started working in the Nordic countries in Sweden and Denmark, I found a world where discipline and demands are not the result of abuse or shouting, what is known as “the old school.” There they make you understand in a much clearer and more concise way. They also give space and time to your life, to have hobbies, to rest. There I discovered what it was like to have three francs and work four days, when I came to work six days a week. And that is something I wanted to replicate in Trescha. There I learned that the more rested you are, the better you perform, and that a good work environment is later reflected in the final result.
News: How did you start connecting?
Treschanski: When I arrived I didn’t know anyone, no colleague. Luckily I found a group of gastronomic people who were very open and willing to join their group and the atmosphere very quickly. The ones who helped me the most at the beginning were Mariano Ramón from Dabbang, Alex Feraud from Alo’s, Pedro Bargero from Chila. Actually all of them, but they were the first.
News: Why bet on a fine dining restaurant when there were fewer and fewer offerings of that style here?
Treschanski: For me fine dining is above all signature cuisine, it is when a chef expresses his personality or identity in a kitchen. And that will never be lost. The small dishes that are in fashion today are still a “live your own tasting menu”, the only difference is that you share the dishes.
News: Did you feel the difference in the way the kitchens work in Argentina?
Treschanski: I feel like there are a lot of things that are definitely different, especially the working method. I work as I have always worked in the restaurants I have been to and the idea was to implement it here. I don’t know how many restaurants work here with the Escoffier brigade system, of head chef, sous chef, chefs de partie, comises, runners, and it is the system we use in Trescha. The more organized and clear each role is, the easier the execution is.
News: What have you learned in the year since you opened until now?
Treschanski: It’s my first time owning a restaurant, so I’m learning a lot. The challenge of leading a team in a new country in which they had never worked, contacting all the suppliers, the economic difficulties of the country, a lot of situations typical of Argentina that must be resolved day by day. But there is something very characteristic of the Argentine, that of covering with a patch, solving and moving forward. You don’t get that in Europe and luckily I didn’t lose it.
