In Buenos Aires, four founders rethought the vegetarian restaurant, creating a place shaped by industrial history, elemental design and an instinct for bringing people together.
There is a particular moment that comes when we are trying to make something important: the moment when we start adding too much.
Another layer. Another detail. Another way to make the idea more complete, more unmistakably ours, more likely to be understood and admired by the people we hope to reach.
Somewhere along the way, the original instinct can become buried beneath our efforts to perfect it.
We have become accustomed to being told what something is, how to experience it and what makes it special. A restaurant can present its philosophy before the first bite; a space can announce its aesthetic before we’ve had the chance to inhabit it. Hospitality, too, can become a performance of abundance: more sensory stimulation, more design, more novelty, more reasons to believe that what we’re experiencing is exceptional.
But what happens when the ambition is to understand what is actually needed?
At Chuí, a restaurant in Buenos Aires named after a border town between Brazil and Uruguay, that question took shape through the process of making the place. The result brings together a former industrial site, a lush garden, wood-fired cooking and music, and feels considered without feeling imposed. There is plenty to take in, but room to experience it on your own terms.
Speaking with Ivo Lepes, one of the restaurant’s four founders, I was struck by how much thought had gone into making the place feel so instinctive.
The Original Idea
Chuí was conceived by four founders — Hernán Buccino, Martín Salomone, Ivo Lepes and Nicolás Kasakoff — whose work brought together different perspectives on hospitality, architecture and concept development. The restaurant’s approach to simplicity, however, wasn’t the starting point. It emerged as they worked out how to bring their original idea to life under the constraints of the pandemic.
When the pandemic disrupted the project in 2020, the founders had to reconsider what they had set out to create. Their original ambitions had met a radically altered reality, and the resources available to bring them to life needed to be reconsidered.
“It wasn’t so obvious at the beginning that we needed to create something simpler,” Lepes told me. “I think the most memorable part of the process was when we decided we needed a more elemental approach. We decided to keep only what was really necessary.”
Elemental is a telling word. It suggests a return to the forces that give something life. For Chuí’s founders, the shift wasn’t about adopting a spare aesthetic, but rather about deciding where their energy would make the greatest difference.
The Elegance of Necessity
The pandemic changed the conditions under which the founders would bring Chuí to life. They had to decide what they could afford to do well, what could be adapted and where their efforts would have the greatest impact.
“We were all under stress, so we said, okay, let’s use all our resources wisely,” Lepes explained. “We were investors, too. When you’re working in a stressful situation, you need to make really good decisions and put your energy into what really matters. And I think that generates something quite elegant. There was a focus.”
Elegance wasn’t the stated objective. It emerged from the decisions they made under pressure.
The result is a restaurant that feels rich without relying on excess. Fire and greenery coexist; the industrial setting retains its character; the space has a strong identity without making its design the sole reason to visit.
That judgement would shape the restaurant’s appearance, and how the founders approached the building they had inherited.
Letting History Remain
Chuí occupies a former industrial space whose previous life remains visible in its materials and structure. Old railway wood, industrial details and the character of the existing building became part of the finished environment.
Lepes explained that the site had been shaped by the craftspeople who worked there before them. The founders wanted to respect those traces. A large metal horn mounted on the wall, for example, remains from the building’s former use by a metalworker who made cuts for extractor systems. It connects the restaurant to the work that once took place inside the warehouse.
The building already had a character of its own. The creators’ task was to recognise what was worth keeping.
That same consideration extended to details guests might never consciously notice. The team could spend hours deciding where something should go or whether a particular detail felt right. But, as Lepes explained, they didn’t want people looking around and thinking, “Look at our great design.” They wanted the place to feel natural to inhabit, even if arriving at that feeling had required considerable thought.
The garden may be the clearest expression of this approach. Lush and almost jungle-like, it creates a gradual passage from the street into the restaurant. Greenery shifts with the seasons, the wind and the changing light. By the time you reach your table, you’ve moved through something living, and the atmosphere has already begun to change.
After a period in which so much of life had been restricted, the garden offers a gentle transition back into the company of others. It doesn’t announce itself as a statement about nature. You simply pass through it on your way in.
Allowing Experience to Lead
One of the founders’ more considered decisions concerned the way people would encounter the food. Chuí was conceived as a vegetarian restaurant at a time when vegetarianism was attracting considerable attention, along with cultural associations around health, consciousness and particular ways of living. In Argentina, where beef holds a powerful place in the national food culture, the decision carried its own significance.
The founders wanted to approach vegetarian food from a different direction. They were interested in a more pleasurable, sensual experience, shaped by fire, music, an industrial atmosphere and a relaxed social energy. The food mattered, but so did the setting in which people would discover it.
A vegetarian label could shape someone’s impression before they’d tasted a thing. The founders wanted people to come for the food or the atmosphere and discover along the way that the menu was vegetarian.
Lepes described the ambition as offering “a big hug to the general public.” It’s an unusually warm way to express a question of taste: how do you create something with a distinct point of view that still makes room for people who may not share your references?
At Chuí, the fire, the garden and the music offer different ways into the place. Someone might arrive for dinner, stay for another drink and discover the rest along the way. The experience doesn’t depend on arriving with a particular set of beliefs or a working knowledge of the founders’ philosophy.
That openness extended to the people the founders imagined gathering around the tables. They wanted Chuí to attract those looking for something new, while remaining welcoming enough that those same people could bring their favourite people along.
Between Worlds
As Lepes put it, “The cool people should be able to bring their father.”
The line captures the founders’ ambition: Chuí could have an industrial edge, a garden and a vegetarian menu without requiring everyone who walked through the door to share the same tastes, generation or cultural references. You could appreciate the place without needing to prove that you understood it.
That balance is also reflected in the restaurant’s name. Chuí is a border town between Brazil and Uruguay, and the founders were drawn to the idea of a border as a place of intellectual and creative freedom. The name suited a restaurant comfortable occupying the space between categories.
Chuí is distinctive without making that distinction a condition of entry. Its identity is clear, but the experience isn’t reserved for people who already know how to read it.
Beyond the Moment
The founders hadn’t expected Chuí to grow to its eventual size. Lepes recalled that they had originally planned for around 80 seats. The finished restaurant has closer to 130, and on busy days it can serve hundreds of people. Their original ambition, he said, was to create “a small place inside a big place.”
Timelessness was a recurring theme in our conversation. From the beginning, the founders had wanted to create a place that would outlast the moment that brought it into being.
At Chuí, the thought is in the materials, the food, the garden and the atmosphere. None demands attention for its own sake. Together, they make a place that feels entirely itself, yet leaves room for people to make it their own.
In a world that so often mistakes abundance for depth, Chuí offers a refreshing kind of ambition: to create something with enough conviction to stand on its own, and enough generosity to belong to everyone who walks through the door.
You can visit the Chuí website here