He always knew that his future was in the kitchen, but his parents preferred that he be in college.
He tried to please them by starting three different careers —Agronomy, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry—, but none managed to excite Diego Telles, 41, as much as the documentaries about Pedro Subijana or Andoni Luis Aduriz that arrived in Guatemala through the Basque Canal ( current ETB Basque) of cable TV.
“One day I said to myself: 'If you've wanted to be a cook all your life, why aren't you doing that?'” he recalls.
And he did it through the front door.
First with a scholarship in 2009 in Mugaritz, where he was finally able to work hand in hand with Aduriz, whom he hugged again this week in Madrid Fusión, and second in Noma in 2012, when the Danish restaurant, which has just announced its closure by 2024,
Telles returned to his native Guatemala in love with haute cuisine, but not so much with its standards, so in 2013 he opened his own restaurant: Flor de Lis.
“I started with a menu that people liked, but it lacked soul.
When I worked with Aduriz, he told us that the sixth flavor is that of stories and I wanted to tell one, but I didn't know which one”, says the chef.
Then he found a current edition of the
Popol Vuh
,
the sacred book of Maya-Quiché wisdom, and decided to turn his culinary proposal around it.
“It is one of the few indigenous texts that survived the burning of works accused of heresy during the colonial era,” says Telles.
"His stories about him reflect the origin of the universe, of man and his role in the world according to the Mayan worldview," he says.
Chipilín glazed black corn tamale, inspired by the four paths that the twins of the 'Popol Vuh' come across on their way to the underworld.
The story of grandmother Ixmukane narrated in a part of a book inspired the first dish.
“She burned copal in front of the cornfield of her twin grandsons so that, when they died, her spirits would go to heaven in the form of smoke and become the Sun and the Moon,” Telles narrates.
The cook found a parallel between this story and his recipe for corn croquettes.
"I clicked immediately and it occurred to me to serve some sweet corn croquettes with quesillo breaded in caramelized popcorn, seasoned with chili salt and smoked in myrrh, on top of a censer that exhales smoke over them," explains the chef about one of the dishes from him.
The Guatemalan incensario de Flor de Lis, in which they serve their sweet corn croquettes with quesillo breaded in caramelized popcorn, seasoned with chili salt and smoked in myrrh.
This is how the Guatemalan decided that his restaurant was going to eat culture and serve stories from the
Popol Vuh
.
He does it in his venison and elderberry tartare with spicy emulsion and olive dust, which represents the magical forest that the twins felled every day and that at night the animals raised again.
Or in their chili and amaranth ash toast stuffed with frog legs and giant ant, which symbolize the curious journey towards their destiny of an insect, a toad, a snake and a hawk.
"The
Popol Vuh
does not have recipes, but it does have stories that can be interpreted through food," says Telles.
Ixmukane sends a message to her grandchildren through an insect.
He runs into a toad that carries him in its mouth, which in turn runs into a snake that does the same.
Finally, it meets a falcon that takes them with its talons to its destination.
Inspired by it, this dish of chili and amaranth ash toast, stuffed with frog legs and giant ant.
The tasting menu, whose average price per person is around 100 dollars with a drink (more than 90 euros), oozes smoke, fire and ashes.
Their recipes include traditional ingredients from the area, such as the increasingly scarce black salt ―of the 60 producing families that existed 50 years ago in the Guatemalan municipality of Sacapulas, only one remains― and avant-garde techniques combined with ancestral ones, such as nixtamalization —a cooking process with water and lime to obtain a dough.
He uses it in his most emblematic dish: a 12-hour nixtamalized tomato, cooked in syrup and served with cream cheese and balsamic vinegar, inspired by the honey from the city of Huehuetenango.
“When I go out to cook I always take it with me because it is very disruptive.
People either love it or hate it, but there is no middle ground”, explains Telles,
who is in Spain to offer four-handed menus in Madrid together with chefs Javier Goya, at The Penthouse by WOW and Roberto Martínez, in Tripea, and in the Valencian Fierro, by Carito Lourenço and German Carrizo.
Tickets have been sold out in all of them.
The Flor de Lis team has developed fifty dishes that have led the restaurant to 51st place on the prestigious Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants list.
“Guatemala is a tourist country, but Guatemala City not so much and, thanks to the restaurant, we have had experiences of people coming for a couple of days just for us.
95% of our clients are foreigners and some have told us that they have flown in from New York to dine at Flor de Lis and return early the next day.”
His first foreign guest was Aduriz himself, whom he defines as "the quintessential storyteller."
The success of Flor de Lis shows that Telles is also successful.
Sawdust carpet, inspired by one of the most emblematic traditions of Guatemalan Lent, made of glutinous rice, dehydrated flowers, rose water and cherry liqueur.
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