Friday, 6:45 p.m., Mishiguene restaurant, Palermo Chico. On a freezing winter afternoon, the climate inside the premises is warm. Dim lights, ambient music, neatly arranged tables and chairs. The walls are overflowing with photographs. The colorful bar shines; the cellar with the wine labels, too. In the background, the open kitchen awaits the start order.
There are a few minutes left before the performance begins and there is a staff meeting. The reservation lists, featured dishes, wines and drinks to be offered are reviewed. At the end, the voice of chef Tomás Kalika stands out when he says “good service.” Everyone returns to their positions and at 7 o’clock the doors open for the first diners.
At a table above the window on Lafinur Street, Tomás sits. He offers water, coffee and is ready to chat, with an eye on what is happening around him. Attentive, concentrated on the answers, but without losing details of the clients and the staff.
His beginnings as a cook occurred, one could say, by chance or necessity. “Unlike what other chefs may say, that it was because of grandma’s cooking, it was not my case.
At the age of 16 I went to live in Israel and at 18, looking for work in Jerusalem, I joined a restaurant with a star of Israeli cuisine as a glass washer. And I was fortunate to fall in love with the job. There they gave me a place as an apprentice.I was able to incorporate concepts and I got the hang of the job.
I think this happens in the vast majority of professions: repetition makes the expert; The more you repeat the process, the more you find perfection. I became a chef as a result of that repetition.”
When he returned to the country, he tried his luck with some gastronomic ventures until the idea of creating a haute cuisine Jewish cuisine restaurant arose. This is how it was born Mishiguene, which means “crazy” in Yiddish and who turns ten years old in October.
“My partner Javier Ickowicz and I said that it was striking that in a city like Buenos Aires, in a country like Argentina, where one of the largest Jewish communities in the world is located, there was no restaurant serving Jewish cuisine.
Before Mishiguene you had to go to a Jewish house to try Jewish cuisine. There was no restaurant and it was the commercial opportunity to do it in a new, different way. And Mishiguene ended up surprising us.”
Hand in hand with Tomás Kalika
-How would you define Jewish cuisine?
-It is an interesting question, because I travel, I participate in conferences and I start my presentations by saying that Jewish cuisine is the largest culinary map in the world. That in the ears of an Italian, a Mexican, a Japanese, a Frenchman, a Chinese, who have large kitchens, can be sacrilege.
Japanese cuisine, of which I am an admirer, talks about what happens in Japan, on its territory. It is an ancient culture. In Jewish cuisine you are not talking about a territory, you are talking about what has been migrating throughout the world since the beginning of time, carrying with it ingredients and traditions.
We Jews escaped from Spain from the Inquisition and one of the main places we went was to southern Italy; The Italian Puglia region has a base of Sephardic Jewish cuisine.
There we took the eggplant, which we had received from the Arabs during the time of the Caliphate. And eggplant is one of the ingredients of Italian cuisine.
Ethiopian Jewish cuisine has nothing to do with that of Denmark or Poland. That’s why I say that Jewish cuisine is the largest culinary map in the world. It does not speak of a territory but of a people. The title is shocking but that’s how it is.
-So Mishiguene is an immigrant cuisine that appeals to the emotional.
-I consider cooking an art, and how to separate art from emotion. With cooking we go to the deepest. What happens from the moment an animal is slaughtered, transformed into food. When it comes to a table it is artistic. There is a staging and it cannot be separated from what it generates in us through our emotional memory.
Each of the human beings that make up this planet has foods linked to our emotions: when your mother prepared that dish for you, aromas related to places, specific issues from your childhood. Cooking is a world of emotions, if it does not have emotion it becomes something mechanical, animal.
-After ten years of running a recognized and award-winning restaurant, which is on the list of the 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America and has a mention in the Michelin Guide, you could say that you are a successful person, but what is the success for you?
-I could turn the question around and say, what would have happened if it went wrong, was it a bad idea? It seems unfair to me to consider myself successful from my perspective for having created Mishiguene; I consider myself successful beyond Mishiguene because I was able to create a family with three beautiful children, surround myself with fantastic people who helped me become who I am.
Mishiguene is a story of work, failures and perseverance. Thanks to that consistency of successes, people see from the outside a successful character, but they don’t see the times we went wrong, the blows we had.
I have a large team, with young people who are just starting out and it is important to bring volatile issues such as success down to earth. Success in any case is in the times you fail and try again.
-Restaurant kitchens are usually places of great stress. How do you handle those situations and how are you as a team leader?
-When you arrived you witnessed a team meeting. And if you had arrived even earlier, we were talking about smiling and how important it is to smile. Imagine entering Disney and finding Mickey sad, it is unthinkable. Inside that costume there is a person, but the moment he puts on the costume it is Mickey.
We become aware that we are all playing that role and we come to fulfill that function. I lead a team, but it is the same team that forces me. Anyone who comes to work at Mishiguene comes with a very high level of expectations in terms of quality, taste, flavors, and personal aspirations.
They did internships in Europe, worked in Michelin-starred restaurants and come here. That challenges us as a team, we cannot disappoint; Then a virtuous circle is created where we feed each other. I am a leader and also a part and we nourish each other.
-What is the concept of Café Mishiguene, Mishiguene’s little brother?
-Mishiguene is nocturnal, warm, for a haute cuisine experience. Café Mishiguene is daytime, informal, the yin and the yang, the opposite side. It opens at eight in the morning and is super sweet; I like to go to eat with my children, friends, get my hands dirty. He is rich and relaxed.
-They also decided to expand and open a restaurant in Mexico.
-We are convinced that Mishiguene is a brand that from Argentina demonstrated to the region the cultural melting pot that we are. They invited us to open our projects in Mexico, which for me is among the most important cuisines in the world.
We encouraged each other but we had a plan to create a larger family, with a kind of Café Mishiguene called Porteño. And the common thread is the cuisine of immigrants that came to Mexico, not only Jewish but Spanish and Italian.
-What dish or food would you never stop eating?
-Egg. It is the most wonderful and complete food we have in the entire world. Egg in all its forms and presentations. It is essential.
-How was the experience of making a television program, which allowed you to reach a wide audience to transmit and publicize your cuisine?
-I loved it. The program was fantastic because of what you can generate and reach the privacy of a home. I would love to come back and do it in a new way. The cooking we do is super doable in a home format and transmitting knowledge, secrets, technique, is wonderful.
-How do you see Argentine gastronomy today?
-It is in an incredible moment, with many good exponents in Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Córdoba, Mendoza, Rosario. There are solid gastronomic expressions, celebrated and ranked by the Michelin Guide and the 50 Best Restaurants. There is quality, diversity and a level of proposal that I am proud of.
-What gastronomic destination would you choose to go to?
-Buenos Aires, without a doubt. I tell everyone. Here you will eat, drink, have arts, fashion. It is an incredible city and the people who visit us fall in love. The world is beautiful, but a city like this, with the people of Buenos Aires, who are the ones who make Buenos Aires, you can only compare it with London, New York and I don’t know which else.
