Daniel Vidal, head chef of Baldío, LATAM’s first zero-waste restaurant, joined Koen in the kitchen in Mexico City to talk about what it actually takes to make radical food accessible to the people it was always meant for. When Baldío won a Green Michelin Star, Daniel didn’t think to take his mother there for her birthday as the restaurant back then could win over critics but not his own community.

Daniel walks through how Baldío rebuilt its menu from the ground up shifting from a Nordic-inflected à la carte that impressed visiting chefs to a tasting menu grounded in tamales, tacos, and corn in every single dish. He explains why familiarity is the gateway drug for getting locals to try ant eggs, grasshoppers, and beef treated with koji to mimic the texture Mexicans already know from corn-fed imports. Daniel unpacks the 60-ingredient mole built almost entirely from kitchen waste — banana peel tart trimmings, English sauce offcuts, insect protein — as both a culinary feat and a zero-waste accounting exercise.

This is the third episode of a three conversations series recorded on location at Baldío, in Mexico City: farm, fermentation lab, kitchen. 

WHY BALDÍO’S ORIGINAL MENU WAS TOO GOOD FOR ITS OWN GOOD

Baldío opened in Mexico City with a menu that was genuinely groundbreaking: ferments, Nordic-influenced technique, ingredients people had never encountered in that context. The problem was it was groundbreaking for chefs, not for the families and locals who live around the restaurant. Daniel Vidal loved it. He just wouldn’t take his mother there for her birthday. The pivot came the day after Baldío won its Green Michelin Star — already planned, triggered by that moment — and it wasn’t a retreat from ambition. It was a recognition that familiarity is the entry point, not the enemy. Saturdays now bring in multi-generational families. Returning customers. People who come back three, four times.

“I think it. I don’t want to bring my mom with her birthday to film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it.” — Daniel Vidal

HOW FERMENTATION MAKES ZERO WASTE TASTE BETTER

At Baldío, around 90% of dishes contain ferments, but the waiters are trained to sell every dish without mentioning them. This is not concealment; it is strategy. The ferments replace water with garum, salt with miso, sugar with other fermented bases. They deepen flavour without announcing themselves, and they absorb what would otherwise be waste: tamarind solids from the bar’s tepache end up in a mole; banana peel trimmings become miso that multiplies into another sauce. The circle closes at the plate. Daniel learned this logic from his grandmother, who never threw out the white pith of a tomato or the outer leaves of an onion.

“90% of our dishes have ferments, but with the waiters, I tell them you can sell all the dishes without saying ‘ferment this’. If someone knows or asks, they can explain.” — Daniel Vidal

WHY BALDÍO TRAINS CULINARY STUDENTS TO NEVER UNLEARN

Chefs from across Mexico and beyond are now requesting stages at Baldío. The biggest shock when they arrive is not the insects or the fermentation program, it is the absence of plastic wrap and aluminium foil, fixtures so standard in professional kitchens that many cooks don’t register them as choices. Daniel is deliberate about what he wants students to leave with: not a set of rules to follow, but a decision to make. He tells them directly that their next job probably won’t work the same way. The point is that they will now have seen another way. They go back to other kitchens asking why things are done the way they are.

“I try to say: probably your next job is not gonna be the same, but you decide what is better for you in the future. I can keep the same rules like I learned in the past, but I decide to find other ways to do it.” — Daniel Vidal

Koen and Daniel also talked about:

• The bar program: all-Mexican drinks, mezcal, pulque, aguamiel, curado de pulque, plus non-alcoholic house ferments made by Ari
• The tamarind mole made from tepache waste solids, and how that circular logic applies even when specific ingredients rotate off the menu
• The Airbnb fermentation experience Baldío runs, where tasting menu guests start with an explanation and tasting of the ferments used in the kitchen
• Chefs doing stages sending updates via Instagram, photos of changes they’ve made in their own restaurants
• The idea that 10% of zero waste is still aspirational/experimental, and that modelling the mindset matters more than perfect execution
• Plans in development: a book, possible distillery, more collaborations with Chris and the Baldega team

MORE INTERVIEWS IN THIS SERIES:

• Pablo Usobiaga – Zero waste and sourcing from Chinampas and smallholder farmers, building nature’s favourite restaurant in a 20 million city
• Chris Locke — Fermentation is the key ingredient for a zero-waste restaurant and the future of food.

More about our guest:

Daniel Vidal is the head chef at Baldío, Mexico City’s first zero-waste restaurant and the only one in the city to hold a Michelin Green Star. He leads the kitchen’s radical fermentation programme — converting every scrap of produce into shoyus, garums and vinegars using ancient koji techniques — and makes weekly visits to Arca Tierra’s chinampa farms in Xochimilco to shape menus directly around what is growing.

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