Interview with Santiago Rosero and Matteo Rubbetino, Founders of Fermento, Vincentina Clandestina

We believe in the talent, creativity, and resilience of our chefs and allies, for this reason we have developed interviews, where we will present various gastronomic projects that will inspire our community.  

On this opportunity, we have created an alliance with the segment “Who is Who”, alongside our communication ally, Juan Carlos Castillo, where every week we will talk about well-known chefs, their stories, creations, formation and inspirations. This week we present Santiago Rosero and Matteo Rubbetino, owners and creators of Fermento, Vicentina Clandestina.  

Santiago it’s a chef and a journalist, and has a Masters Degree in Social Sciences. He lived in Paris between 2010 and 2017, where he worked for Radio Francia Internacional, and as freelance for various well-knowned media in Latin America. His works have been published in magazines like Rolling Stones, Gatopardo, Etiqueta Negra, Soho, La Tercera, El Universal, among others. He was nominated for the Gabriel García Marquez award for Journalism on 2016 and 2018, thanks to the chronicles “A high couture Baker”, published on Etiqueta Negra, and “The Darkness Photographer”m published on Gatopardo. On 2019, he published the book “Amasar”, which tells the story of the bakery Cyrano. As a chef, he has worked in Quito, New York and Paris. He is the founder and co-director of the Idonea, food rescue,  and Fermento, cultural and gastronomic lab, projects.

Matteo was born on December 20, 1987 in Soveria Manelli, a town in the South of Italy. He has a Masters Degree on Art Economy, a title that is much less important than his Pizza Maker title, which he got in Naples on 2015. Since then. His obssession for pizza has encouraged him to develop various projects on clandestine restauration in Quito. Nowadays, he co-directs Fermento, where you can also find his pizza and pasta restaurant, Humo.  

Fermento is the place where Santiago and Matteo’s vision get connected, it gathers various projectes like Idonea (responsible consumption), Humo (artisan pizzeria), and Despensa (artisan, organic and agroecologic products shop). This proposal was conceived as a cultural and gastronomic lab. It is an inclusive, solidary, and automanaged space that aims to promote creation and reflection through grastronomy. On this space, you can fins various other projects that work autonomously and collaborate between each other, by sharing principles on a management level. These principles are related to the development of better practices and more fair and responsible relations on a social, economic, enviromental and gender level.  

Idonea is a socio-gastronomic project that focuses on figthing food waste. It emerges from the concept that food waste is a problem for everybody, so all of us can take action in order to solve it. Through voluntary work, they rescue different foods that are still on a good state from markets and fairs in Quito, with the final objective of giving them a worthy destiny. These rescued foods are transformed in high-quality dishes that are shared with diverse groups, like people in vulnerable situations, but also on dinners that are open to the general public.  

Learn more about these inspirational and colaborative spaces, full of community and local gastronomy on the following interview. We invite you to visit this projects and get amazed with their proposals, you can find them on the Vicentina zone in the city of Quito, Ecuador.