An agricultural engineer first
Before I was a cook, I was an agricultural engineer in Chile. That detour is probably what explains COMER best today. Most people in this trade learn the finished product: the peeled carrot, the filleted fish, the trimmed meat. Agronomy taught me what comes before. The soil, the season, the time it took. What an ingredient went through in order to exist, not just what it becomes once it reaches the plate. I can't look at produce any other way now.
Cooking, by way of pastry
Cooking, on the other hand, came to me through pastry. At first it was almost a game: cakes made at home, no school and no recipe, and that stubborn habit of starting a failed preparation over until it finally worked. That sweet tooth ended up opening a door. I earned a CAP, then trained in Michelin-starred kitchens and alongside Meilleurs Ouvriers de France. That is where I picked up the standard I still hold today, and one very simple truth: a service never holds together on improvisation, it holds on what was prepared the day before.
Before COMER, there was Ré
It all started in 2018, and it wasn't called COMER yet. Back then it was Ré, a Mapuche word (Chile) meaning "pure". I cooked French and international dishes and sold them one at a time, in glass jars, to EDHEC students in Nice. Nothing complicated, but real produce and real recipes, the opposite of what you eat as a student in a hurry. Glass instead of plastic, and nothing going in the bin: what matters today was already there, in miniature. It came to an end when I moved to the Basque Country. The name never quite caught on, because nobody understood it. COMER came next. Simpler, and Spanish, it says what it means straight away: we are going to eat, and it will be generous, fresh, honest and in season.
Anticipate, so you can improvise
COMER was born in the middle of the pandemic, when everything had to be reinvented. Those first services taught me to work with no margin for error. Then restrictions lifted, service picked up again, and the tables filled with people who genuinely wanted to be together. That is when COMER stopped being a work in progress. Since then, every event follows the same rule: anticipate as much as possible so you can improvise on the day. A standing dinner cocktail is a balancing act, with unexpected textures, plating done à la minute and colors thought through right down to the plate. A private dinner is the opposite: fewer guests, more precision, an almost bespoke level of attention. None of that work is visible from the dining room. You taste it.
Seasonal cooking, no compromises
And then there is the essential thing, unchanged since agronomy. Serve what the season gives, when it gives it. Choose beautiful produce, but also the produce left at the back of the stall because it isn't spectacular enough. Forget strawberries in January, and dream instead of chestnuts in November. That is where real luxury lies: in the produce and in the gesture, not in the display and not in the bill. South American at heart, international in outlook, local on the plate. COMER isn't just an easy word to remember. It's what I promise at the table: high-end cooking that stays simple and true, from soil to plate.
