SHAKE THE SOUL

Chef Ignacio Mattos’s personal, playful take on bistro food at his lauded New York restaurant, Estela, is the theme of his new cookbook, where familiar ingredients find a fresh way to sing.

Ignacio Mattos’s playful take on bistro food at NY restaurant, Estela, is the theme of his new cookbook.

I’ve never been too comfortable talking about my cooking because I hope, in a way, that it can speak for itself. That has always been the idea, making food that doesn’t require much explanation to convey emotion. That said, of course there is a story behind it.

As many who have ended up here can tell you, New York is a generous town – the sense of community, the nerve the city breeds in you, the drive that most of us share. This is where

I met restaurateur Thomas Carter, who was looking for his next project. He knew of a space downtown that I knew in its previous incarnation as the Knitting Factory nightclub.

There was nothing fancy or grand about it, but we loved the location and wanted to make it work.

Thomas and I talked about New York institutions like Balthazar, Florent and Prune, and places in Europe like Cal

Pep and Le Chateaubriand – restaurants that were serious yet accessible and fun, that could serve as your neighbourhood spot for a drink and a dish, but could also be more than that. We wanted our place, Estela, to have its own identity.

As for the food, I wrestled with myself and slowly moulded my approach, figuring out how I could give people what they wanted in a way that was true to myself and true to my journey, and the many voices that were part of it. I would cook like an immigrant, who comes from a country of immigrants, working in a city of immigrants, in a country of immigrants.

The food had to have nerve. It needed to be assertive and, if far from perfect, it would bare the soul. Even if you were numb, it would shake you up a little bit, a kind of cooking that would connect in the same way some pieces of music do from the moment you first hear them. Some of it would sound or look common. Some of it would look or sound alien. Yet all of it would feel good and perhaps make you realise that you’d never tried anything like it. Estela, 47 E Houston St, New York, NY, estelanyc.com