Diacá

Guatemala City

Outstanding Guatemalan fare that puts producers front and centre

With Debora Fadul’s restaurant, the hint is the name: in Spanish, Diacá literally means ‘from here’. Indeed, the restaurant is built around the idea of giving value and visibility to native Guatemalan ingredients and their producers – an ethos weaved into multi-course tasting menus that showcase the variety of flavours growing across the country.

Fadul has spent years building strong relationships with local farmers and is now working hard to ensure this network expands beyond Diacá to involve other restaurants, home kitchens and the wider community. The provenance of every ingredient used at the eatery is known down to the farm and is proudly shared with diners; even the dinner menu is designed as a directory of the restaurant’s suppliers with names and addresses.

Respect has long been at the heart of Fadul’s work, and her restaurant aims to pay homage to the earth, the people who work it and the fruits of their toil. From amaranth to a local feta cheese produced by a farm that uses only renewable energy, Diacá’s dining experience offers plenty of interactive opportunities for curious customers to learn more about the people behind their food, while also providing a rollercoaster of flavours that takes clients right to the heart of ancestral Guatemalan cuisine.

As well as turning humble ingredients like corn and carrot into the stars of the dishes, 75% of Diacá’s menu is vegetarian, with all vegetables coming from organic or biodynamic farms. Staff are given training on nutrition and healthy eating with specific efforts made to lower salt, sugar and saturated fats in the menu, and staff meals follow the same strict principles. All meat served comes from regenerative farms, with unconventional cuts favoured in order to reduce waste.

A keen researcher, Fadul is also the creator of Crece en Guate, a searchable database of produce and producers that gives farmers online visibility and direct contact with consumers. Beyond this, she has created her own system of classifying Guatemalan ingredients to better understand their flavour profiles and nuances.

A forward-thinking venue that heroes the first link of the production chain, Diacá is setting the bar high for sustainability across all its applications – and it is therefore no surprise it takes home the Flor de Caña Sustainable Restaurant Award 2022.

Read the interview with Debora Fadul to find out more about Diacá

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