The Gaucho Chef: Interview with Francis Mallmann
Francis Mallmann is an adventurous chef. Once an upstart young cook from Argentina, Mallmann’s career took off with classical stints in France alongside Alain Chapel, and later, closer to home in Argentina and Honduras. He now has restaurants across the Americas and Europe, and a venue in London is in the pipeline (“we’re working on it”). His next project is with Krug and its luxury festival, Into the Wild. After the official festival launch, and before he set off for a week in the South of France, Mallmann discussed the beauty of a happy restaurant, cooking with fire, and adventures in Patagonia.
What ignited your passion for cooking?
FM: It was as a kid when we went to a restaurant and had lunch on a beautiful table. It wasn’t the cooking really, it was more the happiness and celebration of that day that stayed with me. Later on in life when I started thinking about having a profession, I found that I wanted to be involved with restaurants. It’s a place to share, and that’s what I try to do a lot.
Do modern restaurants retain that spirit?
FM: The restaurant is a place to share beautiful moments with people you love. It shouldn’t be like a church, where you are there to tell the chef that he is important, or for him to tell you that he is important. They’re constantly interrupting you to tell you that this was cooked with something or the mushrooms were found somewhere. Go back to the kitchen, I don’t care!
What’s the appeal of cooking with open fire?
FM: I started with a more classical cooking career, working in France for quite a while as a young chef, and carried on with that when I went back home. When I was around 40, I realised that
I wanted to find my own language of cooking, and I embraced the tools of my childhood, the south, the natives, the gauchos. Cooking with open fire was a product of that.
How often do you return to the wilds of Patagonia?
FM: Very often. I love it: Patagonia, the language of the mountain, the Andes, the lakes, the forest, I was bred with that. It’s where I feel at home and at ease. I like the beauty, the silence. It grounds me. At home, there’s no phone signal or internet.
If there was one place in the world you could open a restaurant tomorrow, where would it be?
FM: Paris. I love Paris, it’s the most romantic city in the world.
