Rafael Menoyo photographed hours ago at Loi Suites Chapelco.
Chef Rafael Menoyo (37) is experiencing one of his best professionals.
Since 2021, this man from Mendoza has led the gastronomy of the only five-star hotel in San Martín de los Andes, Loi Suites Chapelco Golf, a place with even more power for Patagonian haute cuisine.
For this reason, yesterday Rafael presented his new winter 2023 menu, one sophisticated gourmet for the exclusive Las Astas restaurant and another, bodegón style, for the Coirones restaurant, both open in this hotel located at the entrance to San Martín de los Andes.
View of the exclusive restaurant Las Astas, in San Martín de los Andes, where Rafael Menoyo works.
Exhausted and happy, that’s how Rafael was this Saturday, who proposes for this winter season deer, lamb and trout meats in his dishes, plus signature pastas accompanied with unique sauces for Las Antlers. And homemade soups, goulash and cuts of meat with a variety of garnishes for Los Coirones.
Desserts obviously occupy a more than special place. The chef proposes a tour of chocolate textures, red berries, local artisan ice creams that can be found, for example, combined in a pavlova (lime mousse, slices of oranges, red berries and cream), Welsh cake or ice cream .
Dish bearing the signature of Rafael Menoyo.
“This creativity embodied in this new menu arises on the one hand from the demand of diners and the hotel and on the other from the need and desire of the kitchen team to put together a more playful and risky menu,” Rafael comments to this newspaper.
He acknowledges that “sometimes it is difficult to express what one wants to achieve in the kitchen. But with time, a lot of work and study things flow well. We are very, very careful when choosing suppliers: we always look for the best product and then treat it with great respect. It has to arrive at the table impeccably. We work with different cooking techniques, we apply the best one for each product according to our criteria and style”.
This extreme care implies the “beauty of producing food; the kitchen should never interfere with it”.
The season is coming more than well, he says. They already have a lot of table reservations. This has led them to revitalize the project to open another restaurant in the Loi Suites, which will be next August.
“The idea is to work on it with another concept, something more punctual, with haute cuisine with a slightly smaller menu and more focused on quality and product rotation. We do want to expand a little more: this is how we aspire to have products from other areas, both in terms of gastronomy and in our part of wines, working with some boutique wineries. Having some slightly more exclusive products is the purpose”, she enthuses.
Even in the diversity of its proposals and restaurants, what remains as a mark and hallmark of distinction is, in Rafael’s words, “to continue making very Patagonian cuisine. Our suppliers are all small producers from here in San Martín de los Andes and some from Bariloche”.
Rafael is in charge of everything related to food and beverages at the hotel, both the restaurants and the events and all the services that are provided within the Loi Suites. After studying gastronomy in Mendoza, he later decided to focus on learning gastronomic management at the Gato Dumas School of Cooks, in Buenos Aires. Then came internships and a scholarship in the Basque Country, Spain.
When he returned to the country, he worked on a cruise that tours the glaciers, managed kitchens, set up teams and did training. He did seasons in San Martín de los Andes (one in winter, another in summer) until in 2021 he became enthusiastic about the Loi Suites project. And with this part of the Neuquén mountain range.
Perhaps that is why the theatricality that Patagonia exhibits here, which had such an impact on him from the first moment, is reflected in his dishes as true edible gastronomic landscapes. Rafael does not have any pretense of art in his kitchen but he does achieve with his designs and aesthetics an experience that enchants the diner.
“From here we invite a re-enchantment of the world,” he concludes.