This newsletter will always reflect something deeper than events or promotions.
Today, I want to talk about Detroit — the city’s spirit and how it shapes the way I cook, lead, and build. As a keeper of fire, I am also a builder. This isn’t just about restaurants, either. It’s about building communities. This is the true reward. Collaboration is the way, the spice of life.
I feel a strong responsibility to contribute to the culinary identity of this city. And what is Detroit? Detroit is resilient, yes. This is well known. It’s tough. The city is direct and unapologetic. There is no pretension, no illusion. This is an honest city. And what’s more honest than the language of fire? Fire is intentional and true. When there’s nothing else, when there’s no fancy ingredients and food gadgets, we chefs are left with the brutal, purifying honesty of fire.
Fire is simple, and this simplicity calms my mind. When someone says, “You can cook whatever you want!”, this is a nightmare for me. It makes too much noise in my head. It is overwhelming. I work better with restrictions, when I’ve been stripped of my comforts. Something beautiful happens when I’m forced to adapt and to make something from nothing. That is when my creativity blooms. And, to be honest, Detroit sparks my creative desire like no other place.
Yes, Detroit is blue-collar. But Detroit is much more than the sum of its past, of its factories and laborers. People who live here know that the heart of this city pulses and thumps to an artistic beat. It’s a passionate city full of inspired, expressive, beautiful people. Honest and creative people who create culture from their own unique points of view. That’s why this is the perfect breeding ground for amazing things to happen.
The first community I like to build is the one inside this building. Without happiness here, I cannot spread happiness elsewhere. With my restaurants, I wanted to create an environment for people to truly be themselves. That’s why I don’t make my staff wear uniforms. I don’t ask them to all wear the same thing because we are not all the same. People here reveal their personalities beautifully and uniquely with their clothing. Uniform we are not; at Puma and Barda we are free and individualistic.
I like to hire free spirits and stark individuals. I hire people because of who they are, what they show me about their person. This is so very important to me. I want my employees to explore who they are in this environment. I want them to experience love, joy, creative expression, and learning. And I often learn from them, too! They teach me. If I need to adapt or learn something new, I am always open to it. I truly feel like I am working with future leaders of the Detroit food scene, and that excites me.
Detroit has allowed me to explore my own creativity in ways that I could have only imagined before. It’s why I don’t like thinking about my restaurants as concepts, but rather experiences. With Puma, I opened a raw, charismatic bar with exciting food. Open-flame cooking with a live DJ right in the center of the restaurant. Just typing that feels like a dream. And it was! I built Puma because I have never seen that experience before. It existed only in my mind. This is the strength of Detroit — the ability to realize your dreams and then share them with the community. I didn’t build Puma because I thought it might be a trend. The idea came from within.
It takes a community to hone a restaurant, too. Barda will celebrate five years this summer. So many of the dishes you taste here have been workshopped for half a decade. The service, the bar program — it’s all evolved and refined with time, with the people here. That’s five years of conversation, ideas, tinkering, and collaboration. By the way, collaboration is the future of cooking. Nothing happens alone. It sounds cliche, but it’s true: The sooner you realize that everything beautiful and good and amazing in life happens due to collaborative effort, the better off you will be.
And so, to me, these restaurants are a part of something larger than a single dinner. It’s part of a long-term contribution to American live-fire cooking, shaped by Argentine heritage, influenced by the Midwest, and guided by intention. Detroit has given me the space to refine my identity, to push, to evolve. To build a hearth at the center of this city, to invite others to gather around it, and to share that fire with anyone and everyone.
As we continue to grow, as the fires continue to burn, our collective voice expands beyond just one city while staying rooted in the discipline that built it.
That is the spirit of Detroit. And it is my hope that the flame of this city reaches far and wide.
Yours in fire,
Javi
