A restaurant like a son.
That is born, grows and then has to continue on its way.
Leo Lanussol talks about the restaurants he opened recently, and the analogy sounds obvious.
He, who created
one of the most original and disruptive places in Buenos Aires
, one of those that will be in the books written in the future of Buenos Aires gastronomy, is now dedicated to opening for others.
An expert in openings.
Lanussol is not one of those well-known faces on TV, but he did spend many years on it:
for eight years he worked alongside Narda Lepes
, whom he defines as his friend, whose assistant he was on El Gourmet and with whom he did countless things. of projects and trips.
And it is a name that has its own weight:
he was one of the creators of Proper
, the now legendary restaurant that used to be in a mechanical workshop in Palermo and that closed during the pandemic, but that previously innovated with
signature cuisine based on fires and on small plates
, a concept that has now expanded everywhere.
“I can't get enough of the small plates, bring me a plate of three kilos of gnocchi with five large meatballs,” he jokes about the trend he imposed with his former partner, Augusto Mayer.
Now, the chef has reinvented himself with a company that, he assures, does not have a similar one in Argentina:
they hire him to set up restaurants
.
He made openings in the interior of our country, but also in Europe, the United States and South Africa and just opened a few months ago Nika Club Omakase, a new premium Japanese cuisine restaurant in Palermo.
Narda's friend
Lanussol was a teenager who liked music.
Punk, especially.
He had a band.
And his father always told him that he had to study or study.
That he had a title.
“I'm going to screw it up,” he says he told himself, before enrolling in the Gato Dumas gastronomy school to seek that degree.
But the race was “very expensive.”
Leo didn't have enough for the quota.
So he saw one of the little papers posted on the school's billboard, and he went to El Preferido in Palermo.
The old Favorite, not the one that is now
cool
and Michelin recommended.
“They were looking for a waiter and kitchen helper.
I introduced myself to Galician Arturo.
He gave me a job and in two years I learned the basics of cooking.
How to make a good omelette, a good breading of fish... My colleagues worked, one at the Four Seasons, another at Olsen, they told me 'With Germán Martitegui we are making a gingerbread cookie', and
I couldn't get over the garlic, parsley and hard-boiled egg
,” he recalls.
The enthusiastic Leo wanted to learn something else and started throwing out resumes.
He came to Dashi, one of the leading sushi restaurants in Argentina.
“They give me a fish and ask me to cut it.
'I don't know how to cut, but I want to learn,' I told them.
'I love your sincerity,'” was the response.
They took it.
With Pablo Nohara and Edgardo Kuda,
he learned the Japanese discipline
.
“Ah, do you want to learn?
And on top of that, you're cool, darling?
Come here,” he remembers about that training that he appreciates.
He worked seven days: Monday to Friday at Dashi and on Sundays serving at the Gran Bar Danzón, another legendary Buenos Aires bar.
One noon he was at the bar preparing sushi, when a regular customer started talking to him.
“I just brought my daughter some knives,” he told her.
“She must be the daughter of a
millionaire
who has spectacular knives and doesn't even use them
,” he thought.
But
the daughter was Narda Lepes
, who was already a figure in El Gourmet.
“Call her,” the client insisted.
He went to a public telephone and dialed the cook's number.
Colleagues and friends.
Lanussol worked for eight years with Narda Lepes.
Photo Courtesy Ness
She offered him work at events.
He told her no, because she needed a steady salary.
“I'll meet you when I go to eat,” Narda encouraged him.
A month later, one night, Lepes appeared at the Danzón.
“Hey, you're everywhere,” he joked.
They exchanged emails.
“With the Japanese we went to open a sushi restaurant in Costa Rica,” Lanussol recapitulates what could be the germ of what he does today.
I was there for a year.
When I came back I was 22 and I said
'I want this, I want to continue traveling'
, and I called Narda."
The cook made the bridge with
one of the great chefs of Latin American cuisine
, the Brazilian Alex Atala.
He spent a year working with him in San Pablo.
On his return, Narda recommended him “with a kid who is breaking everything.”
It was Lele Cristóbal, creator of Café San Juan.
“Matchee.
We are from the skate, from rock, ”she points out.
Lanussol with Alex Atala, one of the best Brazilian chefs.
Photo Courtesy Ness
He worked for two years with Lele while Narda called him to do events.
He traveled to Peru, to the United States.
Until the chef proposed that she be her assistant.
Together they developed
countless projects
: events, TV programs, trips, books... he did internships in great places, such as the New York Frankies Spuntino and the Catalan El Celler de Can Roca.
He didn't stop.
Until Mariano Dabbang, another of the chefs who worked with Lepes, opened his Gran Dabbang and Lanussol realized that
having his own restaurant was not impossible
.
He gave Narda a year's notice.
The day they said goodbye,
they cried together
.
Today they are close friends.
Lanussol was 32 years old and "I opened a restaurant with two pesos," he says. It was Proper. He does not want to go over the details of its closure: he only talks about disagreements with his partner, about an owner who in the middle of the pandemic wanted to charge them a leonine rent for that place that five years before was a mechanical workshop, and an experience that cost him a divorce.
In Barcelona, opening Florería Atlántico.
Photo Courtesy Ness
He found himself, who had always had a lot of work, with
“the first time he had nothing
. ”
He took it easy.
Until she received an email from someone who wanted to open a restaurant.
“Ah, he must be a guy who was going to Proper,” she thought badly again.
He was one of the partners in Tartine Bakery, Chad Robertson's bakery in San Francisco that
made sourdough fashionable
: they were looking to open a fire restaurant with an Argentine imprint.
It was the beginning of the change.
Other people's kitchens
He went to the United States on a work visa.
She jumped into the pool and saw that “it wasn't that bad” and that there were “a lot of things to do.”
There were: they called him to make a change of menu at a reservation near Johannesburg, in South Africa, another at the Italian restaurant Carboni's in Paris...
“I began to realize that there were many businessmen who wanted to have their own restaurant and who attracted a young boy to be their head chef.
But between the two of them they don't have much idea of how to make a restaurant, define its aesthetics, its identity.
I told myself
'Hey, there is a void here,'
” he analyzes.
Thus was born
Ness, his company
, a phonetic tribute to bands he loves like the Ramones and Madness.
Tato Giovannoni called him to do the menu at Brasero Atlántico in Rio de Janeiro and Florería Atlántico in Barcelona, Alex Atala to do an event in Italy, he opened the Sony kitchen in Madrid, here he took charge of the kitchen at the Explora lodge in El Chaltén (which has renowned chefs Virgilio Martínez and Rodolfo Guzman as advisors in other locations), opened Vini, Lucky Sosto's wine bar, and
updated
the Casa del Visitante menu at the Santa Julia winery, gradually putting together a team of almost ten people that includes cooks, pastry chefs, and sommeliers.
“I went to technical school.
I know how to weld, I know about architecture
, Proper I did it.
So when I get together with an architect, I know about heights, about plans, what we are talking about,” he describes his comprehensive work today.
Lanussol, supervising the work of the Núñez space where he will soon open his own restaurant.
Photo Courtesy idea-fija.com
The project that brought him now to Buenos Aires came from the hands of the Babasónico, of whom he is a friend.
Roberto Costas, the owner of Pop Art, was wanting to open a Japanese restaurant on the first floor of his production company.
“I went crazy,” says Lanussol, and highlights how important it was for him to return to the Japanese, to the techniques that he had learned almost at the beginning of his cooking.
In Nika he thought of a sustainable, zero waste
restaurant
, with a kitchen low in sodium and sugar, where Fabián Masuda is the sushiman, and for which they were able to obtain
the best equipment
directly from Japan : from sushi boards to trash cans. Japanese specials.
Back to its beginnings.
Japanese cuisine, now with sushiman Fabián Masuda at Nika Club Omakase.
Photo Courtesy Nika
“I always get hooked on places.
I am somewhat demanding, but very motivating, and that is transmitted to the teams.
It takes a lot of time, but I'm committed, I'm going to have a beer with the kids afterwards to create an atmosphere.
I think
I'm like a session player
– Compare it with music, his other passion.
They call me to do Nika, boom, I put on the Japanese chip.
Visitor's House, all regional.
I have that waist to change my chip.”
In Nika he will stay working in principle for six more months.
She understands that projects “are children that grow and mutate” and affirms that “I always want to be in a place to add.”
Meanwhile, he is also outlining his own opening, which will be called Ness, like his company.
“I found a place in Núñez.
Without being egocentric, I want to change the way I eat,” she slips.
And he promises: “It's going to be primitive: firewood, charcoal.
Disruptive
”.
One more time.
ACE