Welcome back to JB’s Bites! Jena is still on vacation (gotta love that PTO) so Bryce Huffman, BridgeDetroit’s Engagement Director, is here to fill in.
Javier Bardauil, owner and head chef at Barda on Grand River and Warren, talked with me about bringing his Argentinian culture to Detroit, and the unique gas-free kitchen setup that Barda prides itself on.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
BridgeDetroit: What first brought you to Detroit?
Bardauil: Six years ago, my wife was in a real estate business in Buenos Aires, where I’m from, and she heard a lot of things about Detroit, how Detroit was growing. So we came for scouting to see if it was real, to see if it was a good place to invest. But I came here and it was more than that — I fell in love with the city, with the people. All the restaurants were packed and there was no representation of my culture. And so, back in Buenos Aires, we started thinking about not just investing here, but living here.
It took us like a year, thinking and trying to convince our kids. We did a couple extra trips here, of course, to see if this was really real for us, for our kids. Our kids loved it instantly. We came here with the kids in a very hard winter a couple of years ago, and they loved it.
We came here and now we are investing in the city, but not as investors, not as people who are just sending or throwing money to the city and expecting something in return.
We are part of the city. We are working to make this city better. We are betting on Detroit.
BD: You said there was no representation of Buenos Aires or Argentinian culture here. What did that absence look like when you came and what were you excited to bring here?
Bardauil: There is Mexican cuisine here, but other than that, as far as South America or Latin America, there is not much here. So I thought this is a nice niche for me to explore, because there’s nothing like that, and that’s what I have to bring to the city.
My culture happens to love to cook with fire. For any Argentine, it’s so common to turn on the fire on a Sunday and invite people and friends and family and just gather around to drink wine and eat meat. That’s part of a culture. So I say, ‘why not bring that to Detroit?’ So I started looking for a place to open.
BD: That goes right into my next question. I noticed your kitchen looks a bit different than most restaurants. Could you explain your setup?
Bardauil: Yes, it looks different, that’s because there is no gas. No gas anywhere in the kitchen — not even a gas hookup in the entire restaurant. We cook with fire and that’s how everything is made here, with flame. We have the parrilla, which is just a grill. You can expect that if you’re going to a restaurant in Buenos Aires or in Argentina, you’re gonna sit down and you’re gonna enjoy beef made over embers or grilled over wood fire.
BD: How did you come up with the menu? Did you bring in traditional Argentinian dishes or family recipes or some combination of the two?
Bardauil: I went to Paris for school, so I have a very traditional French kind of training. But my kitchen right now reflects what I have to say. There are a bunch of recipes in this restaurant, but most of it is just us, not only me, but part of my team, trying new things, bringing new ideas, and we develop recipes ourselves.
Most of the recipes that we have here are just created for this restaurant and for the equipment that we have here, because there is simple equipment in this kitchen. There is an oven, wood fire oven and a grill. That’s it. There is nothing else. So it’s hard for us to just read a book and bring a recipe, because … we cannot control the fire the way you can do it with gas or in an oven. It’s just fire and us trying to see what we can do with that and how the products are reacting.
I’m not a chef with a big ego, so I’m not trying to step over the product. I like to select the best that I can and just respect the product. I like to make the meat shine on its own. It’s a learning process all the time. We are learning about what we can do, what we can’t, and there is a lot of failure in that but we don’t care.
BD: You recently started a two-person dinner steak night. Can you explain what sparked that, and how it’s going so far?
Bardauil: You read this menu and you’re not gonna find a lot of things in common with other restaurants. That’s why I started thinking about how to become more approachable. And I think this is a very clear statement, Sunday asada, like Sunday Steakhouse, steak, potatoes, salad, what have you. It’s a very straightforward message, and everybody knows what it’s all about.
Once someone who might not be adventurous comes for the Sunday Steakhouse, they get a sense of the place and what else they might like. They will want to come back and try more things. That’s the most important thing, for me to be approachable for a wider amount of people, because I think this is a really nice restaurant to experience.