Taru means “Us” or “Nosotros” in Spanish. Comes from the extinguished language called “Chorotega”. Used by the native people -Chorotegas- that lived at the “Mesoamerica” area (south of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Belice and the west of Nicaragua and Costa Rica). Though the language has disappeared their culture and traditions still run through the members of the Chorotega clans in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Our hotel is in the heart of the Chorotega region.
Fresh
Local
Seasonal
Delicious
Slow food is all about local and traditional foods made to be savored. It’s a reaction against the mass production of the fast food industry.
The slow food movement promotes healthy, locally-sourced food and regional traditions to combat the mindless and hurried consumption of food in the modern day.
It encourages people to cook wholesome meals – and take the time to really enjoy their food.
And it’s about preserving local cultures and heritage in a world where fast-food franchises are wiping out diversity with their homogeneous menus.
The CARCARA or bone-cracker bird. He flies through Guanacaste and when he spreads his wings, they have the shape that I made when tracing the latitudes of the native settlements. The good about this is that the bird lives from north America all the way to south America and has relatives throughout the world. In Costa Rica it flies over Guanacaste mainly. So, I think this is the compliment for the symbol of the restaurant and closes the circle for the concept and allows me if needed to introduce “world” ingredients and concepts to enlighten our own.
As a result of the research and creative work from the Chef we decided that we needed an easy to read, luxurious and chic logo. For that we choose a simple but great font that has movement and transmits feelings from our ancestors, tough but knowledgeable spirit. Green is our primary color as we costa Ricans proud ourselves of the vast nature the country has. Trees and flowers are part of our DNA and our Chorotegas valued them so we decided that a deep peaceful -yet a strong personality- green should be our main color. The native map and Caracara is represented with wings on top. We played with light brown and grey tones to represent an earthy feeling as we proud ourselves of our fruits, tubers, vegetables, seeds, and grains that come from earth itself. The whole logo has the movement to make it luxurious, actual, and chic. Easy to read and has also easy colors to remember US. The name Taru is very easy to remember and pronounce for everyone around the world and its translation to English (Us), French (Nous), Italian (Noi), German (Uns), Japanese (Warera), Portuguese (nós) and Spanish (Nosotros) is also very easy to remember.
Chef Rodrigo Vargas, a native Costa Rican, is a chef with almost 15 years’ experience that feels proud of being Costa Rican and all the country has to offer. Rodrigo has worked in gastronomic cities like New York, Donosti (San Sebastián), Barcelona and Madrid. He has trained and worked at Michelin starred restaurants and top 10 restaurants from the 50 best restaurants of the world by San Pellegrino list and also created concepts in Costa Rica.