Facundo Kelemen

The Climb

Line-by-line kitchen work has marked Facundo Kelemen’s development: IAG gave him the base, then Naná in Vicente López, Tegui, and restaurants in New York (stages) in New York added range without diluting the discipline underneath. Each kitchen widened the frame around his cooking, but the center stayed the same: control, clarity, and a method built through repetition. Since 2018, Mengano has been the place where that progression has been made visible in full, with Facundo Kelemen holding the chef role and sharpening a voice that reads as personal without drifting from the trade.

Today

Kitchen decisions, for Facundo Kelemen, are framed less as business logic than as guest experience. “In the end, we do not think about it from a business perspective, but from the perspective of experience.” It is a useful line because it puts the meal first: what matters is how the room, the plate, and the pacing land together. That idea is tightened in his other remark, “If the concept is novel, the business comes on its own.” Taken together, the two lines describe a working belief that concept is not branding, but structure—what gives a restaurant its function and its pull.

Signature

One-bite beef empanadas, lamb tartare, and steak sandwiches sit at the center of Facundo Kelemen’s signature dishes. The range matters: compact service in the empanadas, a more restrained register in the tartare, and a straightforward, filling format in the sandwich. Read together, they show a kitchen that relies on definition rather than display. The point is not excess of technique, but a tight relationship between size, flavor, and purpose.

In Their Words “In the end, we do not think about it from a business perspective, but from the perspective of experience.”

Recognition

Bib Gourmand Michelin, Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants, and The Best Chef Award place Facundo Kelemen’s work in a broader field of contemporary dining recognition. The awards track a career that has moved from training into established leadership, without changing the terms of the work itself. For Facundo Kelemen, the signal is consistent: concept, experience, and a kitchen with a clear point of view.