Kitchen Stories: The 'unromantic' Chilean couple running a very sexy restaurant in Singapore

Stepping into Araya’s cavernous, moody space and beholding its enormous counter of luminous pink marble, you immediately know this is a sexy restaurant. The kind you bring your date to, or for purposes of seduction of any kind, be it business or pleasure. (I hope, of course, for your sake, that it is pleasure.)

The food arrives, and it’s sexy, too, from the lush plating to the varied textures, as in a ceviche with its tiger’s milk in the playful form of an icy sorbet infused with ginger; or a dessert with tiny fondant penguins perched on the side of the plate.

And behind the counter, there is also love: Chefs Francisco Araya and Fernanda Guerrero, both from Chile, celebrate their 10th anniversary as a couple this year. He spearheads the dishes and the restaurant’s direction, while she bakes the bread and dreams up the desserts.

If you ask them, though, Chile is, er, the least sexy of all the Latin American countries.

“We are not the dancers or the romantics,” said Araya, 41, with a chuckle. When people think of that part of the world, “they think of tropical weather, and dancing, and people with their shirts open. It’s not. In Latin America, Chile is probably the most serious country”.

In fact, “We are closer to penguins”, quipped Guerrero, 36. “We don’t dance that well. Don’t think of women like Shakira!”

They are so pragmatic that when Araya asked Guerrero if she would move halfway across the world with him to Asia, “It was very practical. I told her, ‘Come with me. If things work out, wonderful. If they don't, at least it's a good experience.’ It was not very romantic, but it was on point!”

The couple ran a restaurant in Shanghai together for several years before moving to Singapore to open Araya, which they call the restaurant of their dreams, at the Mondrian Singapore hotel.

Opened in October last year, Araya is the first fine-dining restaurant in Singapore with a focus on Chilean South Pacific cooking.

Here, the cuisine, with elevated South American inflections, reflects the culmination of Araya’s experience working in top restaurants around the world like Borago in Chile and Mugaritz and El Bulli in Spain, along with creativity born of his own personal experiences working around the world, particularly in Japan, where the Tokyo restaurant he opened with two former El Bulli friends earned a Michelin star within a year.

Causa, for example, a traditional Peruvian dish of layered potatoes, chillies, avocado, tuna, boiled egg and onion, is reinvented into a compact stack of chutoro; oca, a tuber from the Andes region; aji amarillo or yellow chilli pepper; and caviar, topped off with a crunchy fried potato nest.

Moqueca, a traditional Brazilian fish stew, is reimagined as beautiful dish of kinki with amaranth and aceite de dende or palm kernel oil.

“There are a couple of reasons why we choose Japanese ingredients,” Araya explained. “One is my experience over there; it’s something I'm familiar with and love. But the other reason we have, for example, seafood from Japan, is because they have cold Pacific waters, like Chile. And the fish tend to tend to have the same flavours and textures.”

"I think the only dish we have representing Chile here would be the empanada, which we try to keep as classic as possible,” he added. Named “Sunday Lunch”, the delicate empanada is filled with wagyu – offcuts from a following course of striploin with chimichurri – and topped with a pebre gel; pebre is a Chilean condiment traditionally made of coriander, chopped onions, vinegar, oil, aji peppers and chopped tomatoes.

It’s not every day that you have a restaurant where the bread is equally enticing. When Guerrero appears with her tray of breads – marraqueta, a classic Chilean bread; a sourdough potato bread paired with smoked chilli butter; and a chorizo and paprika soft bun – there is no way to decline a first, second and maybe even third serving. Nor should you, as this is some of the best bread you will find anywhere in Singapore. Her secret? “I add more salt,” she said, humbly.

“For us, bread is life. We eat bread from the morning until we go to bed,” Araya said. So, of course, they have to serve bread worth the stomach space. “In Chile, we love potatoes more than rice, so we thought, ‘Why not add potato in our sourdough?’” Guerrero shared. This particular bread is also inspired by the Mapuche community in Southern Chile, which makes a potato bread called Chapalele.

When the desserts arrive, you witness the full extent of her genius. There are two desserts that transport you from the North to the South of Chile. The first takes inspiration from the Atacama desert: Chirimoya alegre or custard apple espuma, orange cake and orange flan under a blanket of flower and orange jelly. It’s served along with a View-Master, that retro relic from the childhood of people of a certain vintage, through which you view slides depicting the desert’s seasons, from dry and arid to trees and flowers in full bloom.

With the second dessert, you travel to Antarctica, with a frosty, foggy, liquid nitrogen-topped dish of goat’s milk ice cream, crispy milk, cinnamon creme Anglaise, dulce de leche and Patagonian berries. Here is where you will find penguins the size of your fingernail chilling out on the rim of the plate.

“I really wanted to represent where we come from, which we are very proud of,” Guerrero said. “You can immediately get an idea of what Chile is and how different it can be. Usually, countries are not that different in climate. That's something so special about the country.”

Who would have thought that a dessert course could transport you not only geographically but also in space, time, seasons and nostalgia? If you’ve celebrated a birthday at Araya, you’ll know that Guerrero’s little “birthday cake” surprise is equally striking in its clever simplicity and ability to evoke a time when birthdays were all they were cracked up to be.

At home, though, you’re more likely to find the pair cooking up some really good Chinese food, thanks to their time in China.

“My mapo tofu is very good,” Araya said with pride, while Guerrero said, “I like my fried rice! And potato sautéed with garlic and chilli”.

Although the couple met while working at a restaurant in Santiago where Araya was the head chef and Guerrero was just starting out in the kitchen, they were actually born and grew up in the same city: San Felipe in Chile’s Valparaiso region.

Araya was known for being the handsomest boy in town, Guerrero divulged. But he was only acquainted with her older sister, she said. She herself had attended an all-girls’ school.

Although Araya had become her boss, they bonded over a shared interest in food and wine, and soon became a couple.

In spite of seeing each other at home and at work, “We don’t fight”, they said. Instead, all of their dishes are developed “with synergy. If I create something, she will try it and give me feedback,” Araya said. “Same with every decision at home – we don’t buy anything without talking about it first.”

They go on dates every week, and on their days off. “We like to walk around the Singapore River with our dog”, a rescue they adopted in Shanghai. “She speaks Chinese, English and Spanish!”

In the kitchen, they, too, speak those three languages with their co-workers. “I always say it's a trilingual restaurant,” Araya quipped. “There are many Spanish speakers here. And we understand Chinese. In service, sometimes we speak in Chinese.”

It’s exactly where they want to be, as “Singapore has always been on our radar. I visited years ago and loved it", Araya shared.

Smiling, Guerrero said, “We have been chasing this dream for a very long time”.

Araya is at 83 Neil Road, Mondrian Singapore #01-08.