The short answer is: I’m a writer and cook based out of Buenos Aires, Argentina since 2010. To explain the longer version of how Devour began, I have to go way back.
The summer before I moved to Buenos Aires, I decided to live with my grandparents to save up money. I’d come home from work each night and a recipe, grocery list, and cash were waiting on the kitchen counter. My grandfather was an excellent and impulsive cook, but he’d lost his mobility, and so each night I’d go to the store, grab ingredients, and cook whatever he was craving while he instructed me from his favorite seat at the table.
I fell in love with that ritual of sharing a meal. And when I arrived to Buenos Aires in the summer of 2010, it was my go-to trick to make new friends. It wasn’t a hard seduction. Argentines seem to always be thinking about their next meal.
One night a friend said, “Why don’t we do this every weekend?” and so I became the group’s unofficial private cook.
After 3 years of hosting dinner parties, another friend said to me, “Why don’t you turn this into a supper club and make some extra money?” And so I began MASA, a weekly supper club for 12 strangers hosted out of a friend’s living room.
One stranger happened to be a young writer who wanted to transform a personal blog into a full-blown website about Buenos Aires. And she said to me, “Would you like to help?” And so I began to write restaurant reviews and recipes.
This is what Buenos Aires promises. All you need is an idea to start, and you make up the rest as you go along.
After a few years of writing and researching, I couldn’t ignore the disconnect between my Argentina and the Argentina that’s sold to the rest of the world. And so when a traveler came to masa and said, “why don’t you offer food tours?” I thought, yes, obviously.
DEVOUR began in 2016 as a way to bridge the gap between traveler and local. I want travelers to see just a little bit of what I see, and understand the city beyond the Instagram reels and listicles.
MASA just celebrated it’s 13th year with a trip to Patagonia to harvest our very first house wine. I continue to write, traveling up and down the country gathering stories for publications around the world, covering everything from buenos aires’ obsession with weird pizza toppings to the relationship between bread and indigenous genocide. Luckily, Argentina is a place that allows you to dip your pen into all the inkwells.
And I give tours, telling Argentina’s stories over a shared meal. I hope you’ll join me.
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For more about my work, you can check my writing here and my pop-up here.
