Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/689634
6 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t Meet Masienda Jorge Gaviria started Masienda in 2014, but it had been a concept taking root and growing in his mind for years. After choosing a butchering apprenticeship in Tuscany over law school, Gaviria returned to the United States, and after a stint at Danny Meyer's Maialino, ended up at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber's ultimate ode to farm-to-table cuisine in upstate New York. Inspiration struck in 2013 after Gaviria attended Barber's G9 Chef's Summit, which brought together famous chefs from all over the world along with small, local growers. The intent was to "branch away from commercial agriculture's breeding for yields and toward breeding for flavor and being more intentional about ingredients, about the way we cook," says Gaviria. "It's a push towards reversing 50-plus years of commercial agriculture, and to become more focused on flavor and eating habits." The summit inspired him to think about reclaiming potential for ingredients; the only question was, which ingre- dient? An article in the New York Times about the importance of masa in Mexican cooking and agriculture was a lightbulb moment for Gaviria, and he began to travel to Mexico, spending six months researching corn and reaching out to anyone who would talk to him about the most important foundation of Mexican cooking. He was astonished by what he discov- ered: "Mexico is importing corn from the U.S. because it's cheaper, which meant local farmers suffered. There are around three million farmers growing heirloom corn in Mexico, but it was severely undervalued its own country." Gaviria began connecting with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which had been working on promoting farmers who rainfed their heirloom corn but had no one to sell it to. He reached out to Chef Enrique Olvera of famed restaurant Pujol in Mexico City, whom he had met at Barber's summit. It was 2014, and Olvera was about to open Cosme, a high-end Mexi- can restaurant in New York City, and Gaviria offered him an opportunity to use heirloom corn for his made-in-house tortillas. Still working at Blue Hill, Gaviria was trying to figure out how to get 20 tons of corn from Mexico to NYC. He successfully trucked it across the country; Cosme was a hit and Masienda was born. D G THIS Masienda partner grower Catarino and his family in Mexico. PHOTO COURTESY OF MASIENDA