“My grandma taught me, ‘Don’t throw away anything.’” Long before Martin Babio became the chef and owner of Monte, before tasting menus, wine pairings and meticulously composed plates, there was his grandmother’s kitchen on a remote farm in Uruguay. It was an enormous room that served as kitchen, dining room, and living room all at once. There was no finished flooring - only the earth beneath their feet - and it was where Martin spent much of a childhood he still describes as one of the happiest times of his life.

“We wanted to build a place where people felt comfortable coming in, even if they did not know exactly what they were getting,” Mike Blocher says. “The idea was always to take care of people and let the food speak.” Table X did not appear overnight. It grew slowly and deliberately, shaped by years of work and a belief that food could be thoughtful without being intimidating. From the beginning, it was built on trust: trust between three chefs who believed in one another, trust in cooking seasonally and locally, and trust that guests would be willing to follow them on a culinary journey.