MATAMBRE’s first year in review.

December 22, 2020

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I don’t remember why exactly, likely exhaustion, but sometime around early 2019 I decided that it was time to start weaning myself off of journalism and move into work that was more financially and mentally healthy. It makes me chuckle now that I thought that I could just walk away from writing or imagine a world where hospitality and tourism offered me more emotional stability. This year was defined for me by my words. 2020 felt like a moment in time that nothing and everything mattered and I channeled all of that usually confused and often manic energy into this project and these conversations. It was the year that I understood what I wanted to say, or at least stopped apologizing for it, and I have all of you to thank for giving me that gift with your continued subscriptions, shares and support.

MATAMBRE has changed what I define as success. I have learned to be less hard on myself. I have stopped distracting myself with numbers and recognition, although more of them (read: $$$ and assignments) would be nice. I am beginning to more clearly understand their importance without letting them guide the work. And I think that I have become a better writer for that. I mostly self-published this year and am infinitely proud of my stories on Netflix’s Street Food and the 50 Best Awards in addition to many conversations with people who have never been interviewed by anyone before. Below are 10 interviews that really stuck with me this year.

MATAMBRE created connections with people and organizations that lead to cooking more than 700 plates of food for people who needed it. I also kept up my bi-weekly column with local La La Lista (the first publication that really validated me and in many ways was the first steps towards MATAMBRE) and placed stories in Whetstone Mag and Life & Thyme. The work was reaffirmed by the likes of Alicia Kennedy, who had me on her weekly interview series, and Soleil Ho and Justin Phillips for the SF Chronicle’s food podcast, Extra Spicy. I also have four stories confirmed for 2021, including my first Spanish language piece for a brand new food magazine that is evidence that food journalism is beginning to change here.

I’m not sure what the next year will hold but I do hope that the existential gloom of investigating the climate crisis or the state of worker’s rights begins to feel less heavy. Expect me to start getting more personal, expect less fanzines that go more in-depth, expect to share the hell out of this (or ask Santa for wealth distribution) so I can get more subscribers and hopefully do some travel dispatches.

I am going to take the next two weeks off to rest and plan out the beginning of next year. I wish you all a happy festivus. Stay safe.

Manuela Donnet, chef and owner at Donnet; on adjusting to the pandemic

Not that anyone is safe from what is going on but Donnet is pretty unique in that you are an almost 100% organic or agroecological, fully vegan restaurant and pretty orthodox about the systems you’ve developed here. I imagine it's your morals against the realities of the economy, the supply chain [sic] everything that’s changing everyday. So where have you loosened the reins? 

A lot of things happened to me with my dignity and flexibility during this quarantine. I said to myself, the most dignified thing I can do is sell this sushi and deal with this bullshit until we can open the doors and bring back the Donnet experience. And in the meantime prepare ourselves because I feel like we won’t be able to bring back anything that we did before. Everything has already been buried. The best thing I could do for our last menu we had leading up to the quarantine is let it disappear and let this be a rebirth of creativity, the kitchen [sic] possibly everything. I think that this happens to all of us who want to transcend. Adios! As much as we want everything to be like it was, we are never going to be able to return. It’s time to prepare for the rebirth. How far am I going to push myself to do something I don’t want to do and how am I supposed to do something I don’t want to do? This is the first time since Donnet opened that I don’t enjoy coming to work. I don’t like it. I don’t like that no one is here. I don’t like that all the chairs and tables are crammed in a corner. I don’t like that the team is all fractured. I don’t like giving less work to someone. I don’t like anything! I don’t want to make sushi every day. I don’t like not using agroecological ingredients because there isn’t enough money anymore. But whatever. If I don’t come here, what do I do? We could easily say to everyone, ‘whelp, pandemic!’ Shut it down and come back when this is all over. It would be a better economic decision. Everyone for themselves. The responsibility of being the boss really hit me with everything it had. All these people. My lord. So for now, it’s pure resistance. Let’s make something up so this keeps going and people don’t forget we’re here. 

The thing about small business people like us is that we are tossed into the margins. It’s like standing in the middle of a river and the water is up to your neck and the only thing you can do to survive is be calm because if you breathe in too hard you’re gonna drown. You have to resist. Obviously there are days where I feel like I can’t breathe and I can’t stop crying and I feel like I’m going to die but you get up the next morning and you go to work. 

Gloria del Fogón, co-owner and chef at Trashumantes; on knowing her worth

What was it like returning to work full-time on your independent project Trashumantes?

One of my last jobs was as a replacement in a restaurant that was opening a second one and they offered me a position as head chef. When I arrived, I wasn’t really head chef because there were two other chefs above me that weren’t even working in the kitchen. So I would arrive and would find, I don’t know, two bags of carrots in a kitchen that needed a few carrots for the whole menu. They were throwing food away, things were left to rot, everything was just [sic] whatever. It was a brand new restaurant and the executive chef had basically said he wasn’t going to design the menu. So I made the menu for the opening, I created the recipes, I did all of the testing and that investigation. Later on I was getting ready to quit because it was just a totally unsustainable situation. But before I could my boss pulled me aside and said that he was going to let me go and since I was already halfway out the door, I didn’t really care. He got really mad at my reaction. I think maybe he was expecting me to like ‘oh my god but what happened?’ He told me that I didn’t have what it takes to be a boss and that I  was an impossible person to work with. That I was really conflictive. And I told him, every single ‘conflict’ was because I was trying to minimize waste and create a better work space. Clearly it was a system that they were all very comfortable with and I came to shake things up, that’s why I was hired I thought. I think that I took this power that he thought he had over me. When I was the head chef and the authority figure in the kitchen was me, the problem and the way to insult me was always ‘what is this immigrant woman doing here in this position?’ It was then and there that I told myself that I needed to stop inserting myself into structures where I clearly wasn’t meant to enter. If I’m round, why am I trying to push myself into a square peg? I thought, stop. 

Mario Amado, union leader at Carrefour; on changing politics from the base

How do you see the road to valuing necessary workers?

The only way to place value on this work is that the people who represent us are the workers ourselves. Union leaders have an obligation to not cut their roots with the base and be here, be present. Because if not, you just end up fighting for stuff that makes no sense or you end up with a union ideology that is just theoretical. I’ve been in a lot of situations with people where I ask, ‘Where have you worked?’ ‘No, I wrote a book.’ How can you write a book about me and what it’s like to work in a warehouse if you’ve never lifted a box? It’s hard, you know? This is very specific work. The power needs to remain at the roots. Of course you can enrich yourself, study, read whatever you want but the framework needs to be nourished by the workers.

José Eizaga, owner and chef at Jaguar Arepas; on embracing ancestral knowledge

That loss of knowledge is something that has a lot to do with colonization too. These attitudes are things I have seen in different trips around South America, obviously it manifests itself in different ways in different places. But that aspiration to be another place or turn South America into something else is there and it's everywhere. 

That is exactly why we want to focus so much of our studying on corn. Corn is what unites America. And that is what this project is about. We want to form a community and expand this network beyond Venezuela to investigate food and American culture, and when I say American, I mean the entire American continent. I’m not interested in this idea of Latin America that starts in Mexico and everything below as if it’s something separate. That is a total falsehood and anyone who argues the contrary should pick up a history book. Everyone that lives in America lives on land where there were once native communities, from Canada to here. Some countries have preserved that culture more than others, like in Bolivia or Peru. The United States or Venezuela are examples of places where something else happened and that culture isn’t present. I thought about that a lot when I watched the Street Food episode in Buenos Aires. What that woman said about everyone being Italian, about there not being any indigenous people, like she was born in London or something. This is a South American country. What a sad perspective. And it comes from a place of pride, right? Like look at me, my parents are Italian, as if having European blood is better than having American ancestry. How sad. How sad that that is the way they look at South America. It is just so strange to me. They tricked us into believing that being indigenous was something to be ashamed of when really they are the ones who know the most. They are the ones that contain all the knowledge about our land and our traditions. And with food, that knowledge is incredible. That understanding of seeds, how to plant and harvest, that entire process. There are so many people that think that culture of returning to the land and forming a relationship with her is like a step back. On the other hand, I do feel a change happening that we are living through right now. This pandemic is forcing us to reflect on a lot of things. That’s what I’m doing. I took a class about corn with the Fundación Tortilla that Rafael Mier runs and it changed everything for me. My idea is to open this arepa shop with nixtamalized corn and other dishes rooted in corn like tamales, pozole, gorditas. It will be difficult because there is such little variety of maize left here. But I don’t feel alone. I feel like I am part of a change. I feel like we are returning to something.

Jorgelina Mandarina, cook; on recognizing her transculturalism

You say that you didn’t connect with your Paraguayan heritage until you were older, what connection did you have with that part of yourself as a child?

I kind of imitated my grandmother. She was the only one that held on to her accent and I felt like a kid that speaks two different languages. When I was with her, it was just us and I latched onto that accent. I think as a little girl there was some jealousy or resentment towards me. I am very white so I was treated like I wasn’t really Paraguayan. I was raised without that part of myself. I always wanted to learn Guaraní and begged my grandmother to teach me but she refused. They distanced me from all of that culture that was inside us. Yesterday I spoke with my mother and she told me that it is hard for her to hear me mimic a Paraguayan accent which just comes out of me sometimes. When she arrived here people made fun of her. They asked her to speak so they could laugh at her. And so she would stand in front of the mirror and practice her Argentine accent. She lost a part of her essence. As a little girl I didn’t really understand that. I would get frustrated. I felt like I was being left out. As I got older, I started learning more about my food on the internet. Now I eat mbeju. But I tried it as an adult. I found a recipe online, I tried it, it was good and so I practiced and perfected my technique. One day I took some to my parents’ house and they were like, how do you know how to make this? Now when I have to bring something over to eat, I make sopa paraguaya, which we never ate. It was a necessity to connect with something that was always inside me. I understand why it was rejected but that doesn’t make it any less a part of me. 

Tali Bek Marelli, co-owner of Americano; on changing the restaurant world’s values

You can definitely feel the closeness of the team and that really has to do with the human connections you two have built here. Everyone here is formally employed which is pretty unusual in Buenos Aires. What have you two sought out to create in terms of a team? 

I learned a lot of things [managing a bar group] that I didn’t want to bring with me, and were ultimately why I left. We are all raised to think a certain way and so when you are in the middle of it all, it’s not always easy to identify the pain points. That’s gradual. I was always the only woman in meetings amongst all male managers and owners. Sitting down at a meeting was so hard. I felt very lonely during those meetings. I also heard a lot of things that at the time, I just ignored, and I really regret it because I believe that I should’ve said something. And when I did start speaking up, it was apparent that I needed to leave. But that experience made me very self-aware. I think culturally, we have this idea as Argentines, that we are always the best. And so, who cares who is making the cocktails if it’s the best cocktail. And it matters a lot who that person is and how they feel. There are so many people that are like, ‘these people are lucky they get paid on time’ or ‘they should be happy they are working here’. That is basic. But there is this attitude where everything we do is so great, so amazing, we are so cool. We have this culture that celebrates these people that are so horrible to other people. No one talks about it. But that needs to change. I think that cooks are starting to care less about working with this name recognized chef and are caring more about the values of that chef regardless of who they are. 

Antonieta Brignardello, line cook; on demanding changes from old restaurant dynamics

So all the women organized and demanded that the bosses recognize and change what was going on. What have you learned from standing up to power?

I never imagined that what we were prepared to do would carry so much weight. I swear I am so surprised. Banco Rojo is led by women right now. Not served by. Led by. And it is a pleasure to be here. The people making decisions and who are closest to the bosses are the women because they realized that with the guys nothing was working [sic] unfortunately. But everything has a bittersweet taste to it. This is the calm after the storm. Now we have human resources, now there is a protocol to make complaints, to talk about how we feel and what hurts us and a new poster on the door that explains what to do if we suffer violence. And I love that sign. It’s beautiful. But look at all the shit we went through to get it. There is a lot of pain behind that. The toxic behavior existed because it was permitted. Because this place was being run by the rules from before. And they had to change. Because we didn’t give them another choice. Because this was stronger and now it is history. What we are leaving behind for the ones who follow. These are the new rules.

Erik Mejia, cook; on the empowerment of working for yourself

Do you prefer working underground?

It is incredibly liberating. I do a lot of different things and it all mixes together. Techniques, knowledge, products. I have a freedom here that I don’t have working in a restaurant. Right now I am in this moment as a cook that I am really beginning to understand what I want to cook. When you are in a restaurant obviously you are going to absorb the style or ideology of that place but each cook has something unique in them, you know. What I am doing here is really me. Working at a restaurant has a lot of limitations. There are plenty of restaurants that allow their cooks some freedom but at the end of the day, the chef has the final say. Here I have the final say. I am so thankful for what I am doing and how people are responding. People trust me. I’m doing omakase so people just give me money, they don’t choose anything. They have no idea what they will eat. I’m using whatever I have in the fridge that I was experimenting on that week like vinagres, ferments and other preserves and whatever mushrooms my purveyor brings me. So all I have are these materials I have developed a relationship with and my own curiosity and desire to seek this information out. I think those personal journeys are becoming more valued now. Behind all of this is a lot of investigation. And when it comes time to sell, I tell the client the number of pieces and that’s it. It’s what I have in the fridge. Do you want it or not? It’s that simple. I’m not going to tell you anything. You want a box or not? Last week I sold a ton of boxes.

Santiago Figueroa, community organizer; on the nuances of community action

It’s pretty paradoxical. Because while the government provides very needed financial support, the system doesn’t necessarily empower spaces and the people that run them to work autonomously based on their immediate needs. Obviously, no two community centers are exactly the same, and the system doesn’t totally recognize that. They should give out a budget and access to resources and let individual centers manage them how they see fit. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a union leader within Carrefour who told me that a lot of the other union workers had never worked in a Carrefour before. Most of them were academics or career union people. And he wants to change from the bottom up and the people who have never lived the experience at the base, lots of important details get lost and you end up not fully serving the people you are meant to assist. I imagine that there are a lot of invisible benefits or areas you serve more fully where an assisted kitchen misses the mark. 

An important thing about these spaces is that we are working with a lot of people who are homeless. It is important to us that people have somewhere to sit. That they can have a moment to sit down, talk, think. In other kitchens, you can’t sit down and eat your food. They give you a disposable plate of food and send you to eat somewhere else as if you were an animal. So you are already poor and they make you feel even poorer. Eating that way is so sad. If you have no other choice but to eat that way, fine, that’s fine, that’s life. We could take a subsidy and serve 200 of those a day and have them go off and eat like some delinquent somewhere, but that’s not the idea. Anyway, since there are so many people that are homeless or living in squats coming here, they don’t have a lot of human contact. They’ve lost a piece of their humanity. Humans are creatures of habit. If you were suddenly transported to a mountain, you’d adapt pretty quickly. The same thing happens on the streets. People get used to living that way. I’m not the state. I know I’m not going to solve everything for them. But if what I can do is give them a hot plate of food, I’m going to do that the absolute best way that I can.

Yarinés Suárez, artist; on preserving connections to home

What attracts you so much to the arepa? 

As I started thinking more about my grandmother I became more motivated to rescue family recipes. When I got here I was trying to find my northern star. The motivations for emigrating are pretty clear. All of my work has always been rooted in my land. I was completely connected to ideas of memory and Venezuelan identity. It was really difficult for me to figure out how to explore those themes of place within a place that is completely unknown to me. Migration has motivated this necessity to return to roots. There is something that builds inside of you during that process of migration that detonates something inside you to try to understand these ancestral flavors, these processes. It has been really interesting to see that process with other people outside of their lands trying to re-encounter their history. That was why I impulsively bought a mill. I’ve never used a mill. The first time I saw one was 14 days ago when I bought it. I want to know how to use that machine, how to make my arepas. Try to rescue the family recipes now that I can’t go back. I can’t go back in time. The ability to go to my grandmother’s home doesn’t exist. So If I don’t do this, it’s all lost. I lose a part of my identity and my memory. So my work is turning into a search to rebuild that recipe book. When you are a migrant, it’s not always possible to preserve certain traditions, the recipes of specific places or families. My family doesn’t have many recipes written down.