Argentinian Tomás Treschanski (Buenos Aires, 25 years old) is the youngest Latin American chef to receive a Michelin star. The award, achieved in December, extended the reservation queue for Trescha, the haute cuisine restaurant hidden in Buenos Aires' Villa Crespo neighborhood, by several months and added many foreigners to a previously almost exclusively Argentine crowd. The only ten guests sit at the oval bar that surrounds Treschanski's kitchen and are at the same time spectators of the privileged gastronomic concert that Treschanski conducts in the evening in front of a young orchestra of 20 people.
In almost three hours, they prepare 14 dishes with an Argentine heart but clothes from a wide variety of cultures before your eyes. If beef is the queen of local cuisine, the only dish it has on the menu this December is called “Like at Home,” and features ember-cured tongue. The rest of the selection includes meats (venison and duck) and fish (grouper and mullet), which are far rarer to the Argentine palate, although they come from somewhere in the vast territory: with an extent of 2.7 million square kilometers, it is the eighth worldwide.
The bar of the Trescha restaurant. Anita Pouchard Serra
“In Argentina we have incredible seafood that is sold all over the world, but not in Buenos Aires. We have great fruits and vegetables from the Misiones jungle, Patagonia and desert produce. Because of transportation logistics, the problem is getting it there,” he laments. Its distribution network includes more than 400 producers who supply local ingredients with which they later prepare dishes that travel to distant countries such as China, Japan, Thailand and Mexico.
“I think the main reason I became a chef is because I like traveling and getting to know new cultures,” says Treschanski. “It seems to me that the best way to get to know people and a country is always through food. For me, a visit to a museum with pieces from 100 or 200 years ago doesn't say so much about the culture and the country today, but rather seeing where people eat, what they consume and what they are inspired by,” he continues .
The interview with EL PAÍS takes place on the first floor of the premises where Trescha's test kitchen, i.e. his laboratory, is operated. Gastronomic formulas are scrawled on a blackboard and on the shelves are machines that give the whole thing a touch of science fiction, such as the rotary evaporator, used to produce aromatic distillates, and the centrifuge. Right there, behind a sliding door, lies one of the award-winning restaurant's secrets: the long collection of ferments that go into many of its creations. In this special pantry they keep, among other things, the Korean kimchi, served in a foamed beignet with pickled mussels, the lacto-fermented mushrooms, served with truffle-quince miso, and the kombucha, which garnishes a tangerine dessert.
Various dishes from the Trescha restaurant. In the picture a beet rose.Damian Liviciche
Anchovies.Damian Liviciche
The duck from the restaurant Trescha.Damian Liviciche
The passion to which this chef dedicates every hour of the day has no family roots. “I don't know the typical story of going to the garden with my grandmother or my parents to pick tomatoes. “I was born in Buenos Aires in a family where gastronomy was not the most important thing, but just eating to fill yourself up,” he says.
Milanesas with fries or mashed potatoes, pasta and roasts were part of his childhood diet, just like those of millions of Argentine families. Treschanski doesn't remember exactly when he started cooking, but he remembers spending his nights as a teenager watching the gourmet channel and imitating some of the dishes he saw. “Later I started baking a lot of sourdough bread, which I really enjoyed, but until I was 17 I always thought I would be a lawyer,” he admits.
The thought of traveling to London to train at Le Cordon Bleu changed his life. He discovered a calling that led him to study diligently, work as an apprentice in restaurants such as Azurmendi (Spain), Barrafina (UK), Frantzén (Sweden) and Boragó (Chile) and spend everything he had in restaurants : “I moved on to “food as learning, as a job.”
The underground cellar of the restaurant. Anita Pouchard Serra
Reinvent yourself in a pandemic
The Covid pandemic prompted him to return to Argentina. He was out of the country for six years when all the catering establishments collectively closed their doors due to the exit restrictions and the chefs had to reinvent themselves.
Then Treschanski started thinking about opening his own restaurant, a dream that came true last March, even if it meant going into debt with the entire family. “I owe money to all my cousins, my uncles, my parents' friends… I've probably been in debt my whole life,” he says as he poses for photos in the kitchen, almost ready to receive the second and final shift of the day.
Trescha is only open four days a week to allow the team to recover. “I learned it from Nordic culture, from the way they view work and the importance they give to leisure to rest and live. “That’s when I understood that haute cuisine doesn’t have to be enslaving, but that you can create a balance and find a balance,” he says with conviction. The warm treatment of the entire team, as well as the kitchen, is noticeable.
The restaurant's drinks bar. Anita Pouchard Serra
Countercurrent
He chose haute cuisine against the tide of world trends that were blowing in a different direction. “They say haute cuisine is dead and the step-by-step menu doesn't work anymore, but I think that's a mistake. For me, haute cuisine is signature cuisine. There may be more or less luxury, but I think that there will always be a cuisine that strives for a quality product and in which a chef expresses his personality. Otherwise we would all become McDonald’s,” he says. “I think people might not have five hours left to eat, and so we're trying to offer pretty quick service, in about two and a half hours.”
They fly by. The view goes back and forth through a kitchen with fire, smoke and water and the choreographed movements of the chefs as they prepare, serve and present each new step.
In some cases, the main ingredient plays a central role: this happens, for example, with grilled deer and Peking duck. However, other bites serve to mislead the senses. They look like one thing and are another. The palate discovers that the pink macaron served as an appetizer is not (only) sweet, nor strawberry-y, but also salty and spicy at the same time thanks to the combination of beets, mandarin, horseradish and praline seeds. Or the delicious “sweet tooth” step where the Spoon into the bottom of an egg white cake to rise later and cook with a Japanese broth made from aged bacon, shrimp and sea urchin garm. The sense of smell is also confused if it thinks it detects a coffee aroma in a beetroot cocktail.
Different textures – crunchy, creamy, gelatinous, foamy – and contrasts in temperature and taste characterize Trescha's cuisine, enhanced by different combinations: one with international wines and sparkling wines, another national, a third with non-alcoholic cocktails and the fourth mixed . The luxury of the most expensive restaurant in Buenos Aires is in every detail, including the original handmade tableware designed by artists Santiago Lena and Teresa Garay, whose shapes change with every step.
Treschanski believes that Argentine gastronomic culture has made a big leap from both sides of the counter: there are more and more courageous chefs and more and more demanding customers. There is a gap between the classic cuisine of this South American country – a mecca for meat eaters, represented worldwide by the Don Julio Grill, also with a Michelin star – and the gastronomic journey of an Argentinian around the world that Trescha encapsulates.
Tomás Treschanski.Anita Pouchard Serra