Tegui En Casa: How a top Argentine restaurant fits inside one box

The other night my doorbell rang at around 8 pm. “Allie?” a voice said on the intercom. “It’s Tegui.” A few months back, it would be ludicrous to think that one of Argentina’s top fine dining restaurants would be delivering food to my door. But alas, we are living in a different era now. One where all sorts of restaurants have adapted and reincarnated. And that includes fancy tasting menus.

If you aren’t familiar with Tegui, acclaimed chef German Martitegui opened this celebrated restaurant in Palermo Hollywood in 2009. German, a trailblazer in the modern Argentine cooking movement, has led the way introducing the ingredients of Argentina to the alta cocina world, and also gained local popularity as a judge on Masterchef Argentina.

You probably have walked by his restaurant on Costa Rica street, which is covered in street art, and an unmarked heavy black door that leads to a slick and sophisticated narrow dining room. The long and open kitchen stands powerful in the back, where a crew of chefs in impeccable white coats and black aprons plate the 12-course tasting menu. One of the main reasons people eat at Tegui is for the experience. Under normal circumstances, for most, dining at Tegui would be limited to celebrating a special occasion or if some dollar-loaded out-of-town friends could foot the AR$8,000 peso bill.

Today, the restaurant looks completely different, and although Tegui now is an empty dining room with staff attempting to uncomfortably communicate underneath their face masks, German and his chefs have newfound adrenaline doing what they love to do most: Cook. “Many restaurants won’t survive this crisis,” German told me on the phone last week. “And Tegui could be among one of those. But we need to move forward.” When Tegui closed its doors in March right before President Alberto Fernández announced a national lockdown, German and his team got on Zoom and began to brainstorm affordable formats to execute at home. 

“A lot of people think we are something we are not,” German explained to me. “We don’t define ourselves as a fine dining restaurant, or for our menú de pasos. We are a group of creative people who like to cook. We can’t repeat what happens in Tegui at your house, but we can show the same passion as always.” That’s how they came up with the idea of Tegui en Casa, an interactive and entertaining way of going out right at home. Here, they transform the saliendo experience into a game, a fun activity to change up the hours confined inside.

Here’s how it works:

Customers choose a three-course menu from a selection of four appetizers, four entrees, and three desserts. The food arrives in vacuum-sealed packages with directions on how to reheat by submerging it in boiling water. Then, after watching the tutorial videos, diners can test their Top Chef plating skills and design their own Tegui dishes. The boxes also come with extra bread for the next day’s breakfast and a bottle of wine for every two people. The cost? $1400 pesos per person (that’s around USD$11*).

*As of today, May 16, but inflations a bitch so who knows how much that’s worth now.

Tegui recommends getting dressed up, doing your hair, shaving, setting the vibe with their Spotify playlist, and enjoying a night out, even if you don’t leave your living room. So that’s exactly what I did: I washed, blow-dried, brushed, AND put product in my hair. I took off my sweatpants and stood in front of my closet for a good two minutes thinking about what lucky articles of clothing would be called in for the big game. I put on real footwear (and then shortly after took the boots off because let’s not go overboard). I penciled on eyeliner, and bright red lipstick I’ve never worn before, and for a few hours, despite all the crazy shit that’s happening around the world, I felt comfort in this one moment of pseudo normalcy when Tegui and I took myself out on a date.

As someone who loves to cook and totally misses eating out at restaurants, I am a big fan of meal kits. Especially meal kits made by excellent chefs with impeccable knife skills that come with all the side sauces and herb packs to reenact the restaurant-style plates at home. Sure, there’s a lot of plastic involved (and that’s a topic for another article), and yes, the process of heating up and plating all the dishes might be daunting for a novice in the kitchen, but I had such a fun time preparing my Tegui en Casa meal. And I hadn’t even tasted anything yet. Plus, I was very proud of my plating skills. All of these years working as a food writer – getting in the way in kitchens and paparazzi-style creeping on chefs while they are trying to cook – must have paid off because it turns out, I learned a few things.

The menu & my plating skills:

When I asked German how he designed the menu, he explained that he decided to go back to his roots, bring back some of his greatest hits from the Tegui, Olsen, and Casa Cruz years, and called chefs who used to work with him, like Mecha Solis and Maxi Matsumoto, to reminisce about fan favorites. “We made a tasting menu for many years which is very hard to adapt to the home,” he said, also admitting that he missed making hearty dishes in a non-tasting menu context, and was ready for the new challenge.

The Tegui crew has also taken this opportunity to reflect and reprioritize their values. “When I say the price of how much a cubierto used to cost out loud, it embarrasses me,” German told me. Today, with this new delivery method, and more affordable price point, many customers are gaining access to Tegui for the first time, which excites German. “If Tegui survives this, we would want a different future. To make changes. We want to have more contact with people from Argentina, not just tourists.” But despite the initial Tegui en Casa success and positive reviews from clients, it is still an uphill battle. “We made this box as affordable as we could because I want as many people to try it as possible,” he said, explaining that his goal is not to make a profit, but it is to be able to cover costs of wages for the 24 people that work at Tegui. “My personal struggle is to make sure that my team can keep their jobs.”

“It’s difficult to put a restaurant like Tegui inside a box,” German explained. For years, he repeated to his staff that the service and experience at Tegui are what makes them different. “And now?” he asked himself. “Now our challenge is to make you crack a smile when you open that box.”

• Tegui En Casa
• WhatsApp: 115848-7663
• Price: $1400 – includes appetizer, main course, dessert, cremona, bread for breakfast, and bottle of wine for every two people
• Payment Methods: MercadoPago, Efectivo
• Takeaway & Delivery

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