Rodolfo Guzmán produces a carrot-shaped pod of algae from one of the packed shelves in his test kitchen in the Chilean capital, Santiago: “Put it on your tongue for five seconds,” he instructs. An explosion of salty flavour ensues.
“Imagine getting more kids to eat stuff like this!” he says, eagerly. “Instead of processed snacks like Pringles, they could eat something healthy and delicious from the sea.”
With 4,000 miles (6,400km) of coastline, Chile is the world’s largest producer of wild seaweed, harvesting 405,000 tonnes annually, and contributing more than $100m (£79m) to the economy. The Humboldt Current, which flows along the coastline, ensures the water is cold and nutrient-rich – an ideal climate for a thriving and diverse seaweed population.
However, most of Chile’s seaweed is exported to world markets for use in industrial and pharmaceutical industries, with its gastronomical potential largely untapped.
Guzmán is working to change this. The renowned chef’s restaurant, Boragó, is frequently listed among the top 50 restaurants in the world. His culinary vision draws from Chile’s diverse and unexplored landscapes, with ingredients such as desert wildflowers, forest mushrooms and seaweeds featuring on his menus.
The “sea carrot” is one of his current favourites, an affectionate nickname he has given to a kelp float (a gas-filled bulb that enables the seaweed to float to the surface). Guzmán describes it as a “pure, natural umami bomb”. “We’ve been able to crystallise amino acids, making it like a natural MSG,” he says.
Known for his experimental style, Guzmán is obsessive in his ambition to tame seaweed’s unruly textures and harness its unique salty flavour. His research team includes a division called Original Processes, which focuses on innovation from four ingredients: fungi, rock plants, sea animals and seaweeds.
Of all the unusual foods he’s worked with, one seaweed – the luga (Sarcothalia crispata) – has proved the most challenging.
With its rubbery, sheet-like texture, the luga’s sliminess and bitter taste initially made it inedible. Yet its abundance and ethereal appearance had Guzmán hooked. “We spent two months working with the seaweed every single day, repeating thousands of experiments.”
He tried to poach it, dehydrate it and cook it on embers, but the offputting taste stubbornly remained. Guzmán decided on 10 final experiments, in which he finally found the answer: spraying a kefir solution on the luga as it cooked, balancing the food’s pH while enriching the flavour.
In the Boragó menu, the luga is used as a mini empanada filling; a minute version of a savoury stuffed pastry enjoyed throughout South America.
Guzmán refers to his breakthrough as a potent example. “It shows how knowledge can change the reality about raw materials and ingredients, and transform them into something delicious.”
Julio Vasquéz, a marine ecologist at the Universidad Católica del Norte in Coquimbo, is delighted by Guzmán’s ambition to bring seaweed to Chilean palates. Vasquéz estimates there are more than 800 endemic seaweed species in Chile. “There’s a tremendous variety and all are fit for human consumption. What is lacking are bold chefs who can experiment with this resource.”
Vasquéz points to Chile’s well-regulated cultivation industry, where local fishers and seaweed collectors can collectively request exclusive fishing areas ranging up to 100 hectares (247 acres).
Guzmán has partnerships with a team of more than 200 foragers nationwide, including Gisella Olguín, who collects seaweeds from Bucalemu, a small bay on Chile’s central coast. Every morning, she scales the rocky coasts of Chile’s cold Pacific Ocean, scissors in hand, snipping, tugging and collecting the algae washed to shore. Her partner dons a wetsuit and braves the chilly waters to haul seaweeds on to the beaches.
They usually collect cochayuyo, also known as koyof, which is consumed in Chile and exported for industrial use. Guzmán’s left-field requests for unusual seaweeds initially baffled Olguín. “I was like, ‘why do you want weird things? No one buys that!’”
She has worked with Guzmán for more than a year, sending sea carrots, cochayuyo, and rock plants to the restaurant weekly. The fresh ingredients are sent by public bus to Santiago, where they are picked up by Boragó staff at the city’s bustling terminals. It’s an unconventional but effective way of working that skips the middlemen, resulting in better pay for artisanal collectors such as Olguín. “It is very fair,” she says.
Olguín is from a family of fishers; she grew up eating seaweed as a snack in salads or for seasoning. “It’s an ancestral ingredient,” she says, referring to the Chilean Indigenous group the Mapuche, who have eaten seaweed for thousands of years.
Today, seaweed consumption is rare outside small coastal communities and minority Indigenous populations. “It’s not a product that sells on a large scale,” she says. “This is largely because it has never been given the importance and relevance it deserves.”
The government has launched an initiative to increase annual seafood consumption over the next three years, including a public school food programme called From the Sea to Your School. It has incorporated seaweed and seafood into school meals.
Seaweed is a common lunchbox snack in Asia, from Thailand’s tao kae noi to Japan’s nori senbei, so Guzmán’s dream of creating a healthy algae snack for kids is not without precedent. However, his breakthroughs in seaweed have yet to influence wider eating patterns outside fine-dining circles. He insists that knowledge must come first, before scale.
“At the end of the day, we’re a tiny restaurant,” he says. “We are still trying to figure out the next step to feed more people. All I know is that it tastes really good.”
