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.