One of the most iconic bars of the new Buenos Aires scene turns a decade old and we visited it again to talk to one of its founders and confirm that it is still going strong/A bar that imposed drinks throughout the City, its distinctive musical search, and its artistic “laboratory”/Where is the true magic of this place?/Also: what are the “No DJs” and the project that the group behind Festival is planning for the Malba museum
The Festival bar was one of the pioneers in popularizing Gin Tonic.
In Buenos Aires, there are the “bars of the moment” and there is Festival (ten years of a charming and pioneering balance). By Camila Barreiro. Photos: Sebastián Angel for MALEVA.
There are bars “of the moment” and there are places that transcend the times until they become modern classics. One of those who “are trustworthy” but still find a way to surprise. In the middle of 5700 Gorriti Street, in what used to be a typical townhouse in that area of Palermo, is Festival. A space that combines the outdoors with industrial style, low lights with LED compositions that dance according to the atmosphere, electronic cycles and a 100m2 art gallery. Everything at the Festival is programmed to exist, to invite, to welcome and to become the home of those who, out of curiosity or chance, visit it (and continue to discover it) and have chosen it for ten years.
Hernán Buccino, one of the founders of the bar and curator of the space, is sitting at one of the last tables in the bar, in an area that previously functioned as a carpentry shop. As he sips a glass of wine, he points to his right and indicates that this is where DJs usually play, the time he still chooses “as a customer.” On Saturdays there is a series curated by Bandini called “Mar Sonoro” and invites you to meet DJs and non-DJs who pair with the house’s classic cocktail, the Non Ricordo (blend of rums, clarified bitters and dash of citrus juice, topped with spicy grapefruit jelly).
“I don’t remember what I saw on Instagram today, but if I meet someone today at the bar, I’m sure I’ll remember it for a long time. I think that happens at the Festival,” he analyzes with MALEVA Hernán about the anniversary of his bar.
“It just so happens that, as in all cultural events, ten years after its opening, the Festival once again fits perfectly with a return of electronic music. We have a construction of a musical story that does not exist elsewhere and is valued for occurring in a bar. By not being in fashion or in decadence, communion is achieved,” Buccino explains to MALEVA that he always seeks “to have that fresh and rebellious life that the night should have…”
Festival started when his “brother” Soria was already three years old. At that time, the explosion that represented the balance between a cocktail that was closer to the hotel industry and something warm was the driving force behind the search for new horizons. “In Soria the novelty was the programming of music makers. That’s where I saw the “non-Dj’s” born, but I wonder if it’s where I saw it or where it was actually born. “Sometimes you think it’s original with things that happened 30 years ago,” Hernán remembers about the beginnings. By “non-Dj’s” Hernán refers to diverse people who play music without being professional on the platters, creative people, artists, and others, who put together sets without having the title: “I am a non-Dj, you can be a not DJ.
To differentiate itself from that summery Berlin look, with plants that enter the houses and people partying, Festival was born. With a more urban search that flirted with the most neighborhood Palermo and the neighbors who, little by little, began to understand what the “quilombo” meant.
Ten years after its opening, the Festival maintains the search that gave rise to it: to deepen a musical style closer to new disco, house, rock mixed with electronics and the explosion of indie. An elegant and mysterious look at nightwhich is intertwined with the contemporary art that this sensitive public wants to see. The entire covered area of the bar is, in turn, the floor of the Festival Laboratorywhich exhibits various pieces at almost the same times that the space is open.
“It just so happens that, as in all cultural turns, Ten years after its opening, the Festival once again fits in perfectly with a return of electronic music. We have a construction of a musical story that does not exist elsewhere and it is valued for occurring in a bar. By not being fashionable or decadent, communion is achieved“, explains Buccino, who always seeks to “have that fresh and rebellious life that the night should have.”
«The bar, for its part, was the promoter of a boom that today is “vox populi”: gin and tonic (yes, being ten years old makes you see the wave before it is part of the sea). “When it was not obvious, we managed to increase the consumption of gin and tonic than that of fernet. We made ‘el degollado’ which was served in a large bottle of gin cut in half as a parody of the traveler,” recalls Hernán, who also predicted the vermouths in Soria, being one of the few clients of a distributor that ordered Cynar…”
A bar full of art is still a bar. And Festival was always characterized by receiving many gastronomes who came for a drink after their services. “We are connected to gastronomy from the most secret place,” confesses Hernán. That’s why, The menu had the advice of people who today “have the best places in Buenos Aires” and tries to find a balance between chanchada and quality (yes, everything at Festival is about the balance of tastes, moments and opportunities).
The bar, for its part, was the promoter of a boom that today is “vox populi”: gin and tonic (yes, being ten years old makes you see the wave before it is part of the sea). “When it was not obvious, we managed to increase the consumption of gin and tonic than that of fernet. We made ‘el degollado’ which was served in a large bottle of gin cut in half as a parody of the traveler,” recalls Hernán, who also predicted the vermouths in Soria, being one of the few clients of a distributor that ordered Cynar.
Just like Festival and Soria, Hernán is forming teams with different partners whom he calls “craft entrepreneurs from the Tana school.” They are friends who have fun while visiting stores and devising new moments of consumption. “Now, as a first, we are opening Coronado, the Malba restaurant, with Martín Lukesch (chef). We are very eager to highlight it“We will surely open in spring,” he says.
Between music, artists and the art gallery, Hernán seems not to have abandoned his position as an artistic programmer that brought him closer to gastronomy thirteen years ago and today leaves him in charge of two of the most resilient bars in the city. “At one point I think about what matters to me about a bar. I consider gastronomy a complete experience, where what matters is the moment, the real. AND the real is in the pleasure of a night; where – without underestimating the eating and drinking – the magic is in its characters, in who sits next to you and the anecdotes“, he ends and waits for the recorder to turn off to ask where we are going, because as a good serial enjoyer, he knows that everything is to be discovered and to be discovered at the same time.
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