Innovation: chefs use laboratories to create novelties – 01/30/2023 – Food
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As a way to offer something new and attract customers, restaurants are investing in gastronomic laboratories, territorial expeditions and partnerships with scientists. For many, the initiatives are also a way to determine the direction of the kitchen and work on the image in times of global awards.
Chef Ivan Ralston and his wife, Katherina Cordás, started an endeavor in 2022 with the aim of visiting producers across Brazil.
Getting to know ingredients, processes and cycles around food has become the objective of the Tuju Research and Creativity Center, which emerged from the restaurant of the same name, closed during the pandemic and scheduled to reopen in May in Jardim Paulistano, in the western region of São Paulo. Sao Paulo.
Although they have visited regions around Ilhéus, Bahia, to understand the cocoa cycle in more depth, this first phase has been centered on the state of São Paulo.
Between Cananeia, on the south coast of São Paulo, and Silveiras, in Serra da Bocaina, passing through Terra Roxa, in the interior of the state, the couple has cataloged products and researched their seasonality.
“Culinary investigation ended up becoming less important than the idea of researching period products, which is something little explored in Brazil”, says Ralston.
The first project should be a publication that will be able to scrutinize, in a detailed and unprecedented way, the idea of a Brazilian seasonality. “We want to show that mango in December is better and cheaper, as well as squid.”
For Ralston, the initiative can be positive for the entire market, not just for Tuju. “We have a lot to gain, as well as our customers, of course. But other restaurants can benefit a lot from this survey as well, since it will be available”, she says.
Many restaurants have followed a similar path in search of innovation that goes beyond the kitchen.
Ever since the Spaniard Ferran Adrià began experimenting with combining haute cuisine with techniques from the food industry in the extinct El Bulli, the search for innovation began to spread. This is also a brand of the Danish Noma, voted best in the world five times on the list of the 50 Best Restaurants, and which announced, at the beginning of the month, that it would close its doors to become a “giant laboratory”.
Central, a Peruvian address that has a chance of being the next best in the world according to the same ranking, has managed to stay at the top with the help of Mater Iniciativa. The project aims to explore territories, products and techniques native to the country.
“It’s curious because we started with the expeditions precisely when there was a lot of criticism that chefs were out of the kitchens. It would be impossible for Central to reach where it has if we hadn’t tried to get to know our country better”, says chef Virgilio Martínez.
At Mocotó, a sertaneja restaurant in Vila Medeiros, in the north of São Paulo, while the kitchen works on the ground floor, two floors above the building, other recipes are prepared — but in a test format, with no intention of being served to customers. At least not at first.
Called Engenho Mocotó, the space is a combination of laboratory and incubator to help develop dishes, create methods and other initiatives that can be used in the restaurant.
Discover other projects that were born in restaurants
El Bulli
In 2011, chef Ferran Adrià closed the doors of his Spanish restaurant, voted the best in the world five times on the 50 Best Restaurants list, with the idea of reopening the space as a research center on gastronomy and innovation. According to the website, the idea is that the address is already in operation receiving visitors this year
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The Danish chef, led by chef René Redzepi, voted best in the world five times by the same list, created a fermentation laboratory that made him a world reference in the subject. After ending its regular service at the end of 2024, it should reopen as a laboratory focused on food innovation
“We wanted a place to work on new ideas and solutions without interrupting Mocotó’s routine”, says Rodrigo Oliveira, chef and owner of the restaurant. For him, Engenho has been crucial in determining the path of the restaurant. “It’s our way of keeping curiosity going.”
The space, coordinated by cook Gabriel Salvini, has a kitchen, a collective table with 30 seats and a library with hundreds of gastronomy books.
Recipes such as corn yogurt are created there (from the infusion of grains in milk) and tests are carried out around sun-dried meat in different types of cuts and curing times. In addition to processes involving the service and administrative issues.
“It’s like we have the task of thinking outside the box all the time”, summarizes the 24-year-old cook — who represents another trend in these recent spaces: they almost always have young professionals at the helm.
Chefs Janaína and Jefferson Rueda, from the award-winning A Casa do Porco, in the central region of São Paulo, transformed the apartment where they lived when they were married into a research space, in the Copan building.
“All the training takes place there, the tests, the studies”, says Janaína. Equipped with high technology, from a lyophilizer, used to dry ingredients, to a dehydrator, the Lab, as the space is called, is also where the house’s new menus are born.
The most recent one, based entirely on countries in Latin American cuisine, was conceived in experiments carried out there, she says, since as it is an apartment it is possible to receive cooks from abroad, interns and researchers. “It’s an environment where ideas are exchanged. Without a doubt, the coolest part of our work today”, she says.
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