CHILA

Argentine products at the counter

At the counter, Chef Pedro Bargero works at Chila in Buenos Aires, with a local product able to arrive first as a decision: leave its character intact, then change the frame around it. His time here is tied to fine dining Argentine cooking done live in front of the guest, with the national pantry treated as the main material rather than an accent. Bargero served as Executive Chef at Chila from 2017–2023, and the restaurant still names him as chef; the house has been part of the city’s modern dining conversation since 2006. The lineage stated for his work here is not a named master-apprentice chain, but a method: Argentine ingredients, haute technique, seasonality, and the counter as a place where the hand remains visible. The cooking asks familiar products to carry more detail. Cassava, pumpkin, pacu, beetroot, coriander, black garlic, citrus, seeds and butter do not appear as nostalgia; they come through the station with cuts, ferments, smoke, emulsions and controlled heat.

Nixtamalized pumpkin and smoked pacu

The program at Chila is built around a tasting-menu grammar rather than a list of interchangeable plates. Earlier accounts describe a 3-course menu and a 7-course tasting menu, with wine pairings available, but the more useful craft detail sits in the dishes themselves. Fresh and fermented cassava appears as Chipa Cabure with coriander butter, bell pepper powder and blue butter, a bread memory moved through the bench without losing its chew. Nixtamalized pumpkin comes with apple chutney and pumpkin seeds, using an old alkaline method to change texture and sweetness before the plate is composed. Smoked pacu arrives with beetroot churro, black garlic emulsion and citrus meringue, placing river fish beside earth, smoke and acid. The Argentine wine program follows that same regional logic, pairing local bottles to the menu rather than treating the cellar as a display case.

The room by the river

Puerto Madero gives the room its polished edge: old docklands remade as towers, promenades and glass along the Rio de la Plata. Inside that setting, Chila’s cooking works against simple waterfront spectacle. The room is described with a spare, almost Tokyo-like minimalism, which gives the pass more authority; the eye goes to the plate, then to the hand that finished it. This is a restaurant room built for a long sequence rather than a quick exchange. Courses arrive as small decisions, some in artful presentations, some with a wooden-box sense of reveal, all tied back to Argentina’s regions. The counter matters because it narrows the distance between the guest and the station. Bargero’s work here is not a lecture on identity. It is cassava fermented, pumpkin treated with nixtamal, and pacu held in smoke until the plate can carry Chila’s smoked pacu.