"ALAMESA is an oasis" The New York Times
"A kitchen without fires or knives becomes a powerful tool of inclusion praised by Pope Francis." EL PAIS
"The challenge is being able to replicate experiences like this." CNN
"The opportunity to be happy, have a job and live a fulfilling life." O GLOBO
"A language of colors and threads invisible to the customer that allow the ALAMESA staff to work without stress." EFE
"ALAMESA achieves what many documentaries don't: it moves and touches you, without resorting to cheap shots." CLARIN
100 BARES Presents
ALAMESA RESTAURANT 60 minutes to Inauguration
A JUAN JOSE CAMPANELLA Production
Produced by MURIEL CABEZA MARTINO ZAIDELIS CAMILO ANTOLINI
Why don't you go ahead and cut the basil that isn't here?
Yes, where do I move them?
-Perfect. -Let's see, let's see.
This is in case people ask for lemon for their Milanese.
So it has to be right.
Today is the inauguration,
we are obviously anxious
to put into practice
everything we practiced for so long.
The day we open the restaurant to the public,
the time for our team
to start serving customers
just like any restaurant
Mariano... help me out here! How do you set up?
Put them further apart.
I don't know, I forgot, I forgot.
We are all anxious,
but it is critical not to share this anxiety with the team
and while it is inherent to everyone to be a little anxious,
it is very, very important
for us to lower that level of anxiety.
We have a unique restaurant,
we have a unique project, we have a unique system,
and now is the time to start testing it.
OK, Nacho. You are going to be the front waiter
with Belu and Sofi.
Runners, are you ready?
From the deck, table five to table eight.
ALAMESA: EVERYONE HAS A SEAT
The Alamesa project stems from a question that lingers in the head
of every father and mother of children with disabilities:
What will my child do when she becomes of age?
Come on! Come on!
There you go! Again.
My daughter Julia has PDD
and as you walk alongside a child
with this characteristics through life, you encounter many difficulties.
Suddenly, your daughter is having a bad day at school
and they ask you to take her home right away.
Schoolmates throw a party and she is not invited.
The bus driver does not want your child on the bus
because no one can help should he feel upset.
When my 18-year-old daughter finished school, I thought:
how are we going to tackle the future?
And how are we going to face these challenges?
I realized that I had to create a workspace
where she could live a maeningful life, just like everybody else.
Alamesa is a lifelong empowerment project
and, as such, it began
the first day that the children arrived at the training facility.
Our mission is to set up a restaurant,
but not any restaurant. We will run the best restaurant
among all restaurants.
The Alamesa project
is designed for people with different disabilities,
like autism or developmental delay,
to offer the opportunity to work in a resturant.
Where the food is delicious
and people have fun.
As a matter of fact,
neurodiverse kids are not interested
in not being neurodiverse.
They're not trying to be you or me,
but they're actually trying to be themselves
and live their lives around like-minded people
who share their goals and desires,
among who their behavior doesn't attract unnecessary attention
and where they enjoy the same things than their peers
and things they dislike, displease their peers.
In summary, a world where they essentially feel comfortable.
Alamesa is a project designed from the perspective of the integrated person.
Not from the integrator's.
You'll learn to cook dishes, you'll learn to serve tables.
When they told me about the project,
I was like, What? I wasn't expecting that.
I was surprised... For people with disabilities, I mean...
Is this for real, or is it a drill?
Little by little, we'll learn how to run our restaurant
that will be just like all other restaurants, but better.
I was very interested
that it needed people like us to...
maintain and do everything.
I joined immediately, I really liked it, to be honest.
Team! I want to stress something very important.
This is a job.
And we have to take it as
a job during which we will be serving people.
-Seriously. -Seriously.
I thought: "Well, this is the stage.
where I have to start working, to look for a job,
and I kind of saw it as the beginning
of all that.
Alamesa's idea is to achieve
the same results as any restaurant, but using a very different strategy.
Because we design and write all strategies
in the team's language
which derives from the way that the kids understand their environment,
so they can achieve the best results, and when you taste the food
it's as good, or even better, than any dish you have ever eaten
anywhere else.
Juanpa, you're going to be in charge of peeling the garlic now, okay?
And have that ready.
We are, let's say, autistic
or people with autism, which we could say
are, let's say, on the one hand, more shy than other people,
but on the other hand, let's say, we are more
attentive to detail.
The thing about autism is that it's not noticeable.
And so
instead of a person
when they see these difficulties,
instead of saying, "OK. She has autism,"
they say: "This person is really weird."
And sometimes this makes me a little sad
because I am capable of many things.
Once we open the restaurant to the public...
Yes.
What would you like to work on?
Cook.
-Cooking. -Yes.
-And you, Nachito? -Chef!
Chef? Great. You, Facu?
Also, as a cook.
What I enjoy most is, well, cooking, doing something.
Neurodiverse people
work extremely hard
to adapt as much as possible to the world.
But there comes a time
when they have to stop making the effort
and finally find a place that adapts to them.
Well, Alamesa wants to be one of those places.
Put the potatoes in one of these bowls, okay?
It's a project where I like to make friends,
I like to cook delicious things.
I made friends... Lots of friends.
And I like this place because this is my family.
Everyone can cook.
Not everyone can create a menu,
but everyone can cook.
Let's take a bit off it,
we're going to remove a bit so that it weighs less.
I used to work in another restaurant
and my job was, let's say, to wash dishes.
They constantly bullied me,
they acted as if I was, let's say,
an idiot. I mean, they did...
The others did things, let's say, at a different speed
but, let's say, in a kind enviornment, let's say,
I can complete all chores perfectly and, let's say, on time, but
how they treated me there, let's say...
The disability that Juan Pablo has is called Asperger Syndrome,
which is a moderate presentation of autism.
Since he was very young, I noticed a different sensitivity
that was noticeable in his eyes
It is as if he was carrying his heart outside his chest.
Schooling was extremely tough.
Juan Pablo suffered bullying.
The kids were not ready to tolerate someone different.
A boy who doesn't play soccer,
a boy who does not engage in rough physical games.
At school, I was bullied a lot, I was mistreated a lot,
because, let's say, mainly
let's say, my speaking pace
that sometimes let's say, I stutter,
sometimes I repeat words, and all that.
And for those reasons they bullied me, because they did not know, let's say,
that I am neurologically, let's say, different from them.
It has been very painful for Juan Pablo to grow up,
with his heart exposed, outside his chest.
Typically, neurodiverse individuals
arrive quite battered.
They come with a story of low self-esteem,
of feeling different, and less than others.
Here, in addition to feeling chosen,
we want them to feel loved and respected.
When they called from Alamesa,
and they said that they wanted to have a meeting,
Juan Pablo was reluctant,
and when he returned,
he told me, "Mom,
the person who interviewed me
knew how to deal with a person with Asperger's."
And he went on to list the five points
which had to do with a non-strident decoration.
Presenting things one at a time
confirming that Juan Pablo had understood
what was being said to him.
Cordial treatment
and a smile.
I went, let's say, to places where, let's say, they treated me badly,
and when I heard, let's say, hat I was going to be treated well here,
I was surprised and said to myself: "I have to take this job no matter what."
And in Alamesa, what would you like to work as?
I really don't know...
I would say cooking.
Cooking?
I can handle it, let's say.
We are about to open our doors,
and I'm pretty excited
that people will taste our food.
Come on, Gaspi.
These were two years of trial and error.
Two years of adjustments. No, look, too much salt here
or let's adujst the amount of salt a little
or "this is not the right amount."
These were two years,
let's say,
of great fun, but also of very hard work
adjusting, testing.
Are we on time?
-Yes -Okay.
The most important thing for today is to keep ourselves
totally professional and...
It often happens in large groups that there are fights and all that,
and what cannot happen, is conflict. There must be a lot of camaraderie...
And we are good at that.
Hello. How are you? Nice to meet you
-Hello. -Sebastian, nice to meet you.
-How are you? -I'm Barbi's mom.
-Go ahead. -Thank you.
In restaurants, stress
peaks during service hours.
So, to eliminate that stress factor,
we put together a plan in which food is cooked
asynchronically
and, therefore, everything is ready and simplified
to feed eighty people
in an environment as stress-free as possible.
The process is,
basically to dissagregate the menu
into small steps
so team members can successfully complete their task.
Each of the ingredients arrives at the restaurant from our suppliers
and upon arrival
it is assigned to the appropriate dish and its respective color.
For example, all ingredients to cook a dish, for example, salmon,
are now stored in orange flasks.
Even served on an orange plate.
Such organization
allows team members to know that they are working on that dish.
We use no knives and no fire,
so no one can burn or cut him or herself.
We take all precautions to the limit
for the kid with the greatest level of difficulty.
What does interest us
is having parents who are committed to the project,
and congratulate their children, and collaborate
in bolstering their enthusiasm
and recognize them as adult individuals heading towards
a more independent life.
Alamesa!
We do not want to open a restaurant
where people come to feel good with themselves
because they are helping
individuals with disabilities.
We want a restaurant where people come to enjoy a great meal
and participate in the gastronomic experience
because they like it.
To tackle this objective, which is such an ambitious bet,
we called upon a renowned chef. And this chef
had to accomplish a very difficult thing,
which is to asimilate a completely different paradigm
to the typical gastronomic perspective.
Within the world of gastronomy,
Alamesa is a revolution and a challenge. Why?
In the kitchen, there's always
chaos, nerves,
lots of adrenaline.
And so, organizing properly is very important
from the beginning.
For chaos not to happen, what do we have to do?
It's down there, like this.
There and you dump it like that.
We began a constant negotiation
between the ideas
of people that had never been
been part of a gastronomic project,
and someone who is in gastronomy,
and high-level gastronomy, for more than 20 years.
So, our role as advisors was
trying to balance and support the management team,
on how to maintain the two axis
achieving an incredible customer experience,
with excellent service and delicious food,
while integration works
and, importantly, workers have a great time.
We found a place
in rather poor condition
and we did a whole reconditioning job,
which took quite a while,
not only to make the place as beautiful as possible,
but also to align it
with the production strategies of Alamesa.
We needed,
basically, to put together a kitchen
that had the set up necessary to allow:
the most comfortable design
for those with major motor challenges
where they could be comfortable
with the lighting, sound and noise.
That is why the room of the ovens
is soundproofed.
The kitchen is the heart of the project,
and it occupies
almost 70 percent of the space.
And at the end, you can find
the area for relaxation and rest,
open to the garden,
where we set up the room for relaxation and socializing.
We thought the name Alamesa summed up very well
what we wanted to communicate with the restaurant,
from the point of view of how we felt about the restaurant.
When the name had been chosen,
we realized that Alamesa was truly
owned by the young people who work here.
Therefore,
people who helped us with branding suggested
that our workers themselves
participate in the design of the logo.
Well,
we want you to design the logo.
Each one of you, letter by letter.
All the letters of the word "Alamesa".
Do the letters have to be big or do they have to be...?
Or, I don't know, printed? How should it be done?
However you want,
whatever you think.
For us, it's important that Alamesa
has a little piece of each of you, even in the logo.
You are responsible for every task in the restaurant.
Well, you're also going to create the logo
that will be displayed at the door.
Our concept of Alamesa is to always talk about simplicity.
Alamesa is what it is.
So, the end result is this handwritten logo
made by each and everyone of the team members
"Alamesa".
We made a typographic selection,
where there is one letter per person.
That way, they're all integrated, all there, all embodied.
An idea that I had from the beginning,
was the divergent,
the disruptive,
combined in such a way
that ends up being beautiful and effective.
The logo
reflects that.
Let's see what your colleagues think.
Beautiful, beautiful,
I love it.
Being neurodivergent has advantages and disadvantages
Our brain works differently, therefore,
there are things that are also easier for us,
so it makes me happy when in...
Among all those difficulties,
talent comes out and people say,
"You are
very, very talented."
Let's see, what do you think?
We are a very nice group of boys and girls,
I feel like I have more confidence in myself here.
And above all, I am in a program
with friends who have
a life like mine.
Since Alamesa started, I began to notice
certain changes in Cata's attitudes and personality.
Since her physical appearance
is quite striking, so to speak,
we often felt on display,
the focus of gossip, or...
Or reactions, for example, faces of disgust.
And I think Cata learned to demonstrate
who she is, so that is why
she was so successful in her school integration.
Because, from the start she was pure love,
pure joy, positivism.
Made her get stronger and stronger.
instead of making her fell smaller, they made her feel bigger
For cooking,
to later work in a restaurant called Alamesa.
Her school friends are spectacular human beings,
they love her with all their hearts.
But for Cata, I think it means an effort
to become similar to others or to become like others.
My friends at school liked me, loved me.
I had a very nice group of friends,
but when I actually realized one day,
and even before knowing Alamesa,
I said: "How nice it would be to have people
I can talk to calmly and who can understand,
what you say, what you tell them,
what you do."
It makes me feel very good.
And the truth is, I'm very happy.
I feel more at ease. I feel like
this is more comfortable for me, being able to understand,
because they all speak the same language.
That's what I like the most.
This is going to be the restaurant.
Applause.
Now you're going to go in, and see it for the first time.
Ready to explore the place
-where you're going to work? -Yes!
Come on! Okay...
-Come in, follow Sebas. -Let's go.
It was very nice to see their faces
when they realized that everything
we had been talking about,
like their future workplace, was now a reality.
Our kitchen, the kitchen of Alamesa,
has different areas.
After one to two years
of work in a training facility
they were already very familiar with that space.
But here the dynamics are very different.
Here, the rooms are for real.
Therefore, making sure they have time to process the move,
visiting the restaurant in advance is very important
I loved coming,
I am very excited
-and I'm willing to work hard. -Great.
My whole family asks me, sometimes they drive me crazy,
they tell me: "When are you going to open?" "I don't know."
-Are you anxious? You really want... -Yes.
-to start. -Yes, yes.
-Who else? -It is different now
seeing the place. Before,
it could be something, but now
it's much more rigid, the subject is, so...
Things got serious.
Things got serious, yes.
Julia. What do you want to say, Juli?
I like the new Alamesa.
Did you like the new Alamesa? Great.
New Alamesa? Yes.
We know that Alamesa
is, in some ways,
a project that resembles a birth.
Once it's born, it's born.
And you cannot turn the clock back.
I want to congratulate you all.
We all grew up,
you learned to cook,
you learned to be waiters.
You learned to be receptionists,
and today is the day to make it all worth it.
We're going to have fun,
we're going to do things the best we can,
and every day will get better and better.
for so long, guys. So girls, boys...
-Let's go! -Okay!
Good evening, welcome to Alamesa.
-Thank you. -Do you have a reservation?
Shall we start?
-Agus, green light? -Yes, let's go.
-Let's get started. -Let's get started. There's people.
I need three milangas and a salmon.
The most important thing at this moment, at the inauguration,
is to repeat
what we've been doing all this time in training,
and in the drills,
and that our staff
keeps working
with the same tranquility and the same happiness
that we've been working with this whole time.
Two Milanese and two salmons.
I remember when we started with all this work,
since
a year and a half, almost two years, since we started with all this,
and instead of friends, I entered a family.
I need that pastrami, let's go.
And we have a lot of fun.
In the kitchen and... And we are very happy here.
Is there a salmon in there?
it's really impressive to see the choreography.
How those responsible for different tasks come and go
and the magic stems from us preparing everything for so long
as if it were a long and repetitive theater performance.
The inauguration is over,
everything went perfectly.
We had to run a little and we resisted,
we are ready to go to war and win.
We have shown
that this could be done.
That this project, whether it's a restaurant for 32 people,
or a pharmacy with ten people,
or a supermarket of 50 people,
or a four-person business, it can be done.
This project,
for us, is something very special.
He sketched out ideas,
and told me: "Mom, I want to work in a restaurant."
So, the exercise
was to accompany him to write it, as a wish.
The truth is that right now it's like...
Well, dreams do come true.
and this really empowered him
in a very, very nice way.
What it means for someone to be trusted.
The pain of seeing your child without the opportunity
of having a job,
and well, having this come up, is incredible.
So,
thank you.
Alamesa is a party.
Alamesa is more social life.
Alamesa is empowerment.
Real work.
Alamesa has to transform us all.
It has to transform the kids' lives, your lives, our lives
and, if possible, the lives of all customers.
Alamesa is going to be them.
From day one until now,
-What did you find here? -Friendship.
Friendships.
What else? What else? Did you find other things?
-Teamwork. -Teamwork.
Here I quickly learned many things,
and I loved meeting you...
All of you. And Mili.
It's your turn, Mili.
At first, I felt that...
I felt like I didn't fit in,
like I wasn't going to find my place.
I'd tell myself that I wasn't going to be able to make it
I have never found more support than here.
Never.
I met a lot of people.
-I'm very happy to be here. -How great!
If I need something,
someone always notices it and offers it to me,
and they're all very empathetic colleagues,
and well, that's very nice.
Juli, did you like Alamesa?
Alamesa... yes.
Do you want to keep coming?
-Coming, yes. -And to see...
Great.
how this has changed Julia's life.
How it expanded her
friends, communications, connections,
and her desire to come here to work...
That is what moves me. I do this for them.
That is the truth. And since friends
around Julia
have become such an integral part of her life,
I do this for them.
My dream is to work in gastronomy.
Being able to cook more meals,
have a job. Be able to marry my boyfriend.
Be able to start a family.
Since I was bullied a lot at school,
and well, now...
Being here, meeting so many people who love each other,
and there is a lot of camaraderie.
Well, I learned,
in the sense of learning, let's say, that
the world is not so dark.
How nice.
One, two, three...
Alamesa!
Very good!
Bravo!
ALAMESA: EVERYONE HAS A SEAT
ONE MONTH AFTER OPENING ITS DOORS, ALAMESA'S RESERVATIONS WERE FULLY BOOKED
FOR MORE THAN 4 MONTHS, HAD OUTSTANDING REVIEWS FROM COSTUMERS,
AND ALMOST 100 THOUSAND FOLLOWERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.