He Teatro Colón is a microworld nestled in a block of San Nicolás. The great lyrical hall of Argentina has a life of its own: it dances, sings and also feeds itself. Not only metaphorically: in Columbus, more than 500 people eat every day. And, for some time now, not only the employees, because the theater also has a gastronomic proposal for the general public and this year it added something new: a menu made based on the works that come on stage.
Columbus’ culinary engineering is extremely complex. As the building is a historical monument, no structural or structural modifications can be made. You can’t light any fire either.. A huge challenge for anyone who wants to cook.
Currently, the Colón has several gastronomic spaces. In addition to the staff canteen, the Viamonte and Tucumán sweet shops were recovered, where the public can go between functions. But a cafe and restaurant were also set up in the so-called Pasaje de los Carruajes, which is literally a passage with an entrance through Tucumán where In the past, floats entered to leave the public. And private events are also held.
Gastón Storace (40) is the chef at Colón. He can be seen in the restaurant – which bears the name of the passage – where he sometimes goes out to talk with customers. The chef, who has extensive experience in gastronomy, enjoys sharing the original work he does now: perform an opera or ballet on a menu.
Storace’s is a meticulous investigation. First, read a synopsis of the work. Search for videos on YouTube and watch them in full. Talk to the people at the theater to find out what this particular production is about. and the research It ends with the dress rehearsal, which is always very close to the release date, almost like a confirmation of what it has been doing.
Society Interview with the Chef of the Teatro Colón Chef Gastón Storace at the entrance of the Colón. Study each work to design a menu inspired by it. Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
“Watching a three-hour opera is not something I was used to. But I’m understanding and sometimes a sound or the name of a protagonist triggers things in my head and I write them down. Sometimes it has connotations with the origin, with the history, with the musicians,” says the chef. Also he draws all the time in his notebooks and more than once he wakes up at 2 in the morning, goes down to the living room of his house in the northern area, opens the computer and gets to work. “’What are you doing?’ my wife asks me. And, I’m studying, I’m creativizing the opera,” he laughs.
How is an opera or ballet constructed gastronomically? Storace brings some examples. “In Carmen, the protagonist was one of the gypsies and worked in a cigarette shop. The opera is located in Seville, so I took Spanish concepts and techniques. I I wanted a cigarette on the tablebut I gave it a try: a mushroom cigar wrapped in filo dough with olive powder on the tip and turmeric to create a butt,” he describes.
In the “Suite en Blanc”, one of the pieces of the praised “Mixed Program” that went on stage at the end of August, he chose the vichyssoisea traditional French potato and leek soup, to represent the white and the simple, the pure and the complex, inspired by this homage to Serge Lifar’s academic ballet.
Purity, simplicity and complexity: a soup “interpreting” a ballet piece from the “Mixed Program”. Photo Blue Catering – Group L
Before, in “Turandot”, there was represented its enigmas in various waysfrom Chinese cookies with a message as the starter to a granite of lychee (an Asian fruit), citric acid pebbles that exploded in the mouth as a dessert.
Or in “Aurora”, the first national opera that has just left the stage, closed the menu with a flan with dulce de leche in a modern versionwith herbal cream and cocoa nibs, expressing the freedom of the final act.
This 2024, Storace and its team they will make 11 menuswhich are added to the restaurant’s a la carte dishes and the daily dining room service, all under the concession of Blue Catering of Grupo L. The chef says that when they offered him that position, more than a year ago, he felt that it was the opportunity to unite the two worlds that always crossed it: gastronomy and art.
The private chef
In telling his story, Storace travels back to before his birth, in Uruguay. Somehow, food was in its origins. His father, from a Christian Uruguayan-Italian family, lived separated by a party wall from his mother, from a Jewish and Argentine family. The righteous They had a fig tree and one day she stole one of the figs. He discovered her and they reached an agreement: he would give her the figs in exchange for her making him a cake.
“There weren’t many chances that they would be together, but love conquers everything,” he explains about a time with other mandates. Gastón’s parents married and had five children. In his early childhood they came to Argentina, and he grew up in that family with four brothers where there was absolute freedom, where “giving and food were always a language of love,” and where Sunday lunches still exist today. They gather them around a table where lajmashin and ravioli coexist in harmony.
Storace in the Colón kitchen. You cannot light a fire in the theater. Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
In that free environment, young Gastón wrote and painted, and also learned to cook. His grandfather, whom he recognizes as “a fighter for life” who built his company from nothing, was quite direct: “As a painter, you’re going to starve yourself. Please study something”. His grandfather gave him the opportunity to study and he graduated from Ott College, and continued his training with masters and courses and also in the kitchens where he worked, where he is grateful to other chefs who nourished him with knowledge and experiences.
“You have to go to the bases and the ABC. Once you have it, you can start creating, but understanding the techniques and within a limit. If not, it’s a cocoliche,” he explains. He started in a catering service in San Isidro and also worked there at Lo de María, where the owner’s son and a Peruvian chef taught him a lot. He then went to Brazil, where he lived for several years and trained as pizza chef and also very strong in handling fish and in the world of pasta.
He was in Ilha Grande, the main hotel of Jureré Internacional and continued his journey in Peru, where he learned a lot about product traceability and in Portugal, where he remembers that He got on a raft at eight in the morning to go look for oysters.
Back in Argentina, he worked on several ventures (from his own organic bakery to a restaurant where he invented a sushi “hamburger”), but what he expands on the most is one that awakens many fantasies: be a private chef.
He tells of his experience with an important businessman, who lived alone in an apartment in one of the most imposing towers in Núñez and He rented the upstairs apartment to transform it into a kitchen and storage room.. “He worked all day and on Thursdays he asked me to meet with him to tell him about the week’s projects, my trips, where I was going to go get the merchandise. He loved sweet potato candy and he made it with organic sweet potatoes and agar agar that he went to look for in Patagonia,” he says.
Such was his boss’s obsession with traceability that asked him to do research on water and, after sending the samples to the laboratory, they determined that the best was a Uruguayan brand that was specially brought in by the crate.
The chef at Pasaje de los Carruajes, the Teatro Colón restaurant that is open to everyone. Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
With their boss, they went to eat at the best restaurants in steps to replicate that research and learning at home. But Gastón also prepared him, for example, his own breads and even isotonic drinks. “I went from morning to afternoon from Monday to Friday and left everything ready for him. I did what I like, which is cooking.”, he states.
He also worked for many years as a private chef in the summers in Punta del Este, was on TV at ESPN Playroom and today enjoys a new experience at the Colón. He highlights Silvina Del Grande, the Gastronomy and Events manager, who accompanies all his crazy ideas and who is “a generator of emotions who loves those creative things.”
And a moment just a couple of weeks ago is kept in his memory, at the close of the “Mixed Program” menu. With the dessert, a thousand leaves of apples and pears that expressed on the plate that striking image of the dancers from Bolero people started applauding. “It was spontaneous and I was shocked. It’s one thing to be applauded at an event or at a barbecue, but to suddenly have the diners stand up and applaud was very strong.” A way to receive, in return, the love that he learned to put on every plate.
