The chef Pía Quintana It does not seek to impact impossible techniques or surprise with exotic ingredients. His is another type of sophistication: the one born from the deep understanding of who is going to sit at the table. Therefore, instead of opening a restaurantdecided to create Indigoa new project of Catering in CDMX that transforms each event into an intimate conversation between who cooks and who eats.
“I was not interested in setting up a generic menubut to think every meal as a story, “he says in a quiet voice.” I like customers to arrive with an abstract idea: ‘Something that smells of Tuscany’ or ‘A dinner that feels like being in Cuba’, and From there I start building“
Pía Quintana chef
That construction begins with investigationrain of ideas and menu tests. There are no formulas or prescribed recipes. And that also implies knowing how to give up. “There are ideas that sound incredible, but when you imagine doing 120 dishes equal at the same time, you understand that practical decisions must be made. Camilo, my partner, helps me land. He comes from the world of banquets and has the eye to see what will work.”
Leave the kitchen, cook again
Before Indigo, Pia He had worked in restaurants, hotels and as a private chef. After pandemic and a health problem that moved it away from the kitchenshe understood that he did not want to return to the same rhythm, but Yes to your trade. “I had no energy for a restaurant, but I knew I wanted to continue cooking,” he says. Life, as he usually does, put someone complementary on the way, and the project began without name, almost as an accident.
Indigo catering
“We did the first event a week after we met. Then another came, and another. Until we realized that this already had a form and needed identity. It was on a trip to Oaxaca Where the name appeared. INDIGO. A word that is color, plant, stone, process. I liked it to mean many things, just like this project. “
None of this is improvised
In Indigo There is no improvisation disguised as spontaneity. Each assembly, each dish, each visual element responds to an intention. “I get involved in everything. It is not that we deliver beautiful food and now. Sometimes I serve myself, I explain the dishes. I want to know where I am cooking, for whom, at what time of the year. That changes everything.”
This proximity also allows people with specific nutritional needs. “I have experience cooking For people with restrictions, from Vegetarians even people with autoimmune diseases. They look for me because they know that I take care of each ingredient“
And he says it without dogmas: “I am not radical, but I do not use processed products. I cook with what is in season, use vegetables as if they were proteins. I treatment of a pumpkin like a ribeye. Because not everything vegetable has to be light or bland. There are tomatoes that deserve respect. “
Pía Quintana chef
Cooking is also listening
Indigo It’s not just a catering service. It is a way of accompanying. A possibility for those who want to eat well, yes, but also be part of an experience built to measure. Pía has served dinners in Polanco Rooftops, in houses designed by Barragán, in intimate departments, at weddings in private terraces. And each space requires a different reading.
“It’s not just thinking what we’re going to do. It’s thinking How are we going to provoke something. What will make that event look like any other. Sometimes the answer is to serve with your hands, sometimes to put everything in the center. The important thing is that it is unforgettable, but Without stridency“
Why do it so?
Because it can. Because after having done everything, he understood that There is no need to return to what no longer vibrates. He says it without sentimentality: “After what I lived (breast cancer), I needed to reconnect with the essential. This is what I want to do now. Cook well. Cook beautiful. Cook with meaning “.
Today, through Indigo, Pía is close to fire againbut with another clarity. He knows what he wants. He knows who he wants to cook. And he knows that the most important thing he can offer is not a spectacular dish, but an experience that is not repeated.
Instagram: @indigo.bypia
From intimate dinners to banquets of 300 people.
