La Boca Is All Smoke, No Fire

"At the age of forty, after achieving considerable success cooking in the French technique, he turned away from the European culinary model to become an apostle of fire and primitivism. Drawing upon childhood memories and indigenous South American techniques, he began cooking over (and beneath, and within) open flames, building iron domes from which to suspend matrices of chickens and root vegetables above smoldering bonfires, affixing whole cows to metal crucifixes to slow-cook for days."

"In 1995, at a showcase at the Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie in Frankfurt, Mallmann stunned the gastronomic world with a nine-course meal composed entirely of Andean potatoes, which, owing to Germany's strict importation laws, he had to smuggle into the country. In an episode of "Chef's Table" that aired in 2015, Mallmann, then fifty-nine years old, with a shoulder-sweeping shock of white hair tamed by a puffy beret, spoke philosophically about his communion with his medium of choice:"

Francis Mallmann, a sixty-nine-year-old Argentinean überchef, built a reputation for cooking over open flames and embracing primitivism. At forty he abandoned classical French technique and adapted indigenous South American fire methods, constructing iron domes and slow-cooking whole animals on metal crucifixes. He staged a nine-course Andean potato meal in 1995, smuggling tubers into Germany. He appears on "Chef's Table" and likens building a fire to making love. He runs multiple restaurants and lives on a private Patagonian island that offers very expensive "Fire Dining Experiences." His New York debut failed to live up to his famed fire-driven mythos.

Read at The New Yorker