Carles Tarrassó
The Inca Dining Room
Cookbook and dining experience
Contents and food styling: Carles Tarrassó
Illustrations, design and layout: Maria Guerrero
Photographs: Manuela Ruiz and Maria Guerrero
December 2019 - Present
The Inca Dining Room is a cookbook that arises from a gastronomic experience carried out at the Hacienda San Agustín de Callo, in Lasso, Ecuador.
San Agustín, built inside an Inca palace, is one of the greatest exponents of syncretism between the Inca and colonial cultures in Ecuador.
The experience, which is inspired by the history of the hacienda and the landscape of which it is a part, consisted of a 15-step menu.
Dishes incorporate local ingredients and wild herbs collected from the surrounding area.
We conceptualize the dishes from the evocations of the hacienda and
its landscape
Vegetables between order and disorder (left)
Combine domestic and wild plants from the farm's orchards and gardens (right)
Quail, shadows and syncretism - Inspired by the Inca walls of the hacienda
Reinterpretation of the Ecuadorian puchero, which combines European and American ingredients and techniques
The seed and the sun (above) - Sunset at the summit of Cotopaxi (below)
Reinterpretation of the ají de pepas de sambo
The gastronomic experience in San Agustín
de Callo
Concept and execution: Carles Tarrasó, Camilo Ruiz
December 2019
Hacienda San Agustin de Callo
Quito, Ecuador
This gastronomic experience took place on December 5 and 6, 2019 in the Inca dining room of the Hacienda San Agustín de Callo. The menu is the result of a reflective study on Creole cuisine and the history of the hacienda. The dishes evoke its history and landscape, and are made with local ingredients, many from the Hacienda's orchard. Experience is the germ of the project The Inca Dining Room, a cookbook that collects the recipes served those days.
Golden foil on which appetizers are served. It has an illustration of the hacienda printed during Jorge Juan de Ulloa's
geodesic mission in 1735.
