Humble Jimenez

By Genevieve Sawyer 

Chef Gonzo Jimenez is a long-distance runner, chocolatier and North America corporate pastry chef for Ecuador-based Republica del Cacao. The Argentine native likes to run ultramarathons of 60 miles or more, and although he takes breaks for cat naps and maintains basic levels of hydration, sometimes the sheer exertion on these marathons causes him to hallucinate. Sometimes he sees bluebirds; other times he sees bears, the kind of grizzlies that became the subject of his chocolate designs. Jimenez loves the outdoors and running allows him to unwind, and he has found that unwinding is necessary to fuel his creative energy. He travels all over South America, the United States, China and Thailand, teaching professional chocolate-making classes and consulting with Republica del Cacao’s clients. He has more than 180,000 followers on Instagram. In 2022, he debuted on the Netflix show Bakesquad, showing off his ability to make desserts that were as visually striking as they were delicious.

On one episode, he constructed a sweet taco cart with Florentine cookie tacos, mango and cinnamon ice cream, sweet salsas and chapulines. For another show, he built a four-foot-tall chocolate-sculpted unicorn loaded with chocolate ganache and vanilla wafers inside smash-cake hooves. When the show returned for a second season, Gonzo created a giant chocolate rocket that blasted off and smoked when he pressed a button. He also made a 300-pound life-sized piano and a chocolate boombox with accompanying cassette chocolate bars.

He will be appearing in another television show scheduled for 2025 — Gonzo can’t talk about the show due to a non-disclosure agreement he signed — and has garnered so much interest that he has an agent in Los Angeles who filters offers for him. Yet this career is not something he dreamed of when he was growing up.

Jimenez originally planned to become an architect, but he lacked discipline, and his frustrated parents kicked him out of the house when he was 18. He first found temporary work as a dishwasher, but soon sensed food was in his future a year later when he walked into a convenience store in Patagonia and tasted one of the owner’s creations: milk chocolate mixed with cereal and orange peel. He was smitten.

As he progressed to working as a prep cook and later a cook, he also put himself through culinary school in Mar del Plata and later the prestigious Instituto Argentino de Gastronomia, graduating from IAG in 2008.

He soon realized that the culinary and pastry worlds offered more than a way to make a living and could lead to a career as an artist. This realization has borne fruit; Gonzo’s use of color and composition make his internationally renowned chocolates almost as delicious to behold as they are to consume. “When you’re a young chef and a young cook, first you need to pay your dues and work in a kitchen and learn the basics,” he says, “and then over time you start developing your creativity and you’re able to put your own story on a dish, on a dessert, on a chocolate sculpture. Basically, I learned the basics of pastries and then I started being creative and expressing whatever I had to say by combining different flavors and such. I love the artistic aspect of it one hundred percent.”

Jimenez enjoyed the tightly-knit community, camaraderie and fast-paced back-of-the-house environment, but he also partied frequently with his comrades. While he is glad that he never became addicted to drugs, he realized that what he was doing wasn’t realistic for the long term, that he simply couldn’t stay in the industry and be successful if he continued to live the rock star lifestyle.

“When we were all young that’s what all young chefs did,” he says. “Young cooks, you know, you party, play around with drugs, drink a lot and then over time you realize that that is not sustainable and, actually, if you want to be a creative person, you need to take it all the way to the other side; just a healthy lifestyle; you need that time in order to be creative . . .

“Nowadays I’m a huge advocate for that. I mean I talk about this when I do classes and demos and when they ask me about my background, and how I started and, it’s, you know, the kitchen lifestyle. I went through that path for a little bit and then like I shaped up.” He learned his lessons, but he still sports a Willy Wonka tattoo.

So a year later, at age 24, Jimenez relocated to the United States, where he developed his own line of chocolates for wholesale distribution at the Hyatt hotels in New Orleans and New York City. He then moved back to South America again in 2013 to work at a Grand Hyatt in Chile and took on his role with Republica in 2017.

Earlier in his career, Jimenez would hear about large chocolate companies that wanted to meet high standards for ethical business practices but were prevented from doing so by their sheer size and corporate structure. “Back in the day, you would hear all these stories about traceability and things that you knew deep down that they were not actually very real.” he says. “They were just marketing lines. But then once I got introduced to Republica, they flew me down to Ecuador and I was with the CEO and he knew the name of every single one of the farmers. That’s when it clicked and I’m like ‘Holy cow, this is tangible!’  It’s so small that you can actually see the story, and the story is actually real.”

Jimenez has become the face of the Republica brand. The company has four stores, all in Ecuador, where they sell products to make bars, brownies, cakes, cookies and ice cream. (In the U.S., Republica only services businesses, but does not have retail locations.) Jimenez helps clients develop recipes, comes up with menus and helps to train staff. At one operation in Los Angeles, he oversees a workshop for 60 local pastry chefs.

The company’s comparatively small size makes it easy for those farmers to monitor the quality of the cacao, sugar and milk they produce. “The difference between a giant corporation and Republica del Cacao?” Jimenez asks rhetorically. “We are such small producers and we have such tight connections with every single producer of cacao in Ecuador and Latin America [that] we know exactly where every bean comes from. That’s the difference. We know the traceability of everything. The other larger corporations –  it’s such huge amounts of cacao that it’s impossible to trace.”

One of Republica’s many single-origin chocolates is a white chocolate made from cocoa beans, milk and sugar from Ecuadorian farms, all located within kilometers of one another. Republica has developed a network of local farmers in South America, Mexico and the Dominican Republic that are all geographically close. 

This means that not only are community ties easy to form and sustain, but also that Republica has a low carbon footprint and limited environmental impact. “[Republica has] really strong relationships with every single ingredient producer,” Jimenez says. “[including] the people who produce the sugar from the sugar cane plantation, so they have been able to establish, like, really strong relationships not only on the cacao side of things but with every other single ingredient. . .

“There’s always something to learn not only from a technical culinary standpoint, but the story could lead to a recipe or a flavor combination or anything like that.” The white chocolate with roasted corn Republica makes for its clients is a case in point. it’s something unexpected that Jimenez uses to get North American clients to be curious about all the culinary delights that South America has to offer. “We created this chocolate that contains corn; chocolate with a savory ingredient,” he says. “That’s how we speak about South America, South America in a product. It’s fun to see people’s reaction when they open a bag of corn white chocolate here in the U.S. They’re like, ‘What do you mean it’s corn? Yellow corn, like the corn from Iowa?’ No, it’s a whole different type of corn. It has more of a hominy flavor to it. It’s different but it’s actual South American roasted corn.”

At 39, Jimenez has already demonstrated staying power in a grueling industry that can be unforgiving. “What you need to understand is that if you get into this industry, you’re getting in because you love to serve people,” Jimenez says. “We are here to serve. We are servants, ok? We’re here to provide for people. We create memories and smiles. It’s just a craft, the same as a barber. People have idolized this because of television and social media; everybody wants to be the next celebrity chef. If you go on television and you do that for X amount of seasons, you need to go back to your normal life and keep on doing what you do. Keep on baking, creating and serving people. That’s what it’s all about.”

(This article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)