MAYAN DINING IN TULUM
Where there’s smoke there’s … a grill
The Yucatán Peninsula pulls away from the rest of Mexico, stretching like a turtle head into the Caribbean Sea. It wants to go its own way, and when it comes to food, Yucatecans do. They hold fast to their distinct Maya culture.
On a recent trip to Tulum, I felt earth, wind, fire and smoke in the food. (The wind because breezes and wind were a constant off the Caribbean.)
The Maya of pre-Columbian days are right there: Pibil (meats wrapped in banana or plantain leaves and roasted in an earthen pit) is still a way of life, as is barbacoa (meats grilled outdoors over fire). Pibil, barbacoa, charring, smoking, sour oranges, limes, habanero peppers, vanilla (the Maya used it in hot chocolate), recado sauces and achiote — all Maya.
Some celebrated restaurants I visited in Tulum continue the tradition, cooking only with fire and smoke in dining rooms carved out of the jungle. Denmark’s famed Noma restaurant operated a seven-week pop up in Tulum in 2017, a testament to the area’s allure.
I got an up-close look at local cooking with Irma Santoyo Macedo, the chef at Zorba Beach Homes, where I stayed. This off-grid beach area in Tulum, once a hippie enclave and now more boho and boutiquey, is surrounded by jungle in contrast to sprawling resorts along the Riviera Maya.
Zorba Beach Homes, which opened last November, offers a cool service where Santoyo Macedo and her team come to your villa to cook breakfast, lunch or dinner for less than the cost of dining out. And, as I was to find out, her food sings with freshness, quality and the Yucatan.
Snow Colbeck of Nelson, coowner of Zorba Beach Homes, bonded with Tulum as the daughter of former hippies (musician and painter stepmom) who sailed into this paradise in the early 2000s. They bought property and spent winters camping on the beach, eventually building rental accommodations.
Colbeck’s dad became known as Naked Bob for his clothing-optional walks down the white satiny beach sands.
“They took many of the musicians they met in Tulum back to play music festivals in Vancouver, Crawford Bay and Kaslo. My father always idolized primitive ways of living, and my parents lived close to this lifestyle in Tulum.
“The local Mayas were very peaceful and welcoming. It’s a beautiful and international spot with a bohemian vibe and excellent food. We wanted to offer full homes so families and groups could stay together,” she says of her partnership in Zorba.
Santoyo Macedo has a map in her mind to the best and freshest ingredients in Tulum. I’m a sidekick to this Energizer Bunny as she zips around shopping for a lunch she’s going to cook for us. On her list: fish, masa, achiote paste (recado rojo), produce and one bottle of beer.
“Not for me, for cooking!” she says of the latter. “It’s important to buy fresh from people using local ingredients. If not fresh, it’s hard on my stomach.”
We stop at a mamey cart loaded with the luscious tropical fruit that tastes like the offspring of sweet potato and papaya. Then we’re off to a stand to buy achiote paste, the hallmark of Maya flavour, made with annatto seeds and spices like cumin, cloves, cinnamon, allspice and oregano. The annatto seeds turn it a deep orange.
The vendor also sells the smouldering recado negro (charred chilies, smoke, spices). Recados are like moles but distinct, blending annatto seeds with Caribbean, European or Middle Eastern spices.
At the fishmongers and, uh oh. Closed! A hurried phone call and we’re in the back of a super bustling seafood restaurant buying grouper caught that morning for ceviche, fish taco and a Yucatecan style fish.
Next stop, a masa vendor grinding dried corn kernels, steaming it and cooking it into a paste, des- tined for tamales, tortillas, beverages and sauces.
At a green grocer, Santoyo Macedo buys vegetables and herbs and then one last stop to buy one beer.
“Not for me,” she reiterates. “It’s for the fish taco batter. It’s my secret.”
Santoyo Macedo may have grown up in Acapulco, but she has a deep connection to Yucatecan food after being a chef at restaurants in Tulum for years. She learned Yucatecan traditions from her beloved habuela (grandmother) and mother.
Her grandmother travelled to the Yucatan to sell cocoa, tobacco and hibiscus flowers and even spent time living with Indigenous Maya to learn cooking techniques, especially how to prepare achiote.
Mexican women like Santoyo Macedo are the treasurers of Mexican history through their cooking techniques, ingredients and traditional dishes passed down through generations.
“My grandmother was an artisan and made pottery utensils, comales and barbecued in clay, stone or a buried oven,” Santoyo Macedo says. “No shopping! She had a garden, chickens, eggs, milk, cheese. My mother had a butcher shop and sold pork, chicken, chicharron, carnitas, cochintas. They loved cooking.”
Her grandmother raised 11 children, and her single mother raised nine. Santoyo Macedo inherited that same amazing energy.
Back at the villa, she’s multitasking, making fish tacos, salsa, ceviche, taco chips, guacamole, and a Yucatan fish. She marinates the latter in a sauce of achiote paste, apple cider, tomato, garlic, fresh oregano, salt and pepper (marinating is big in the Yucatan).
Santoyo Macedo showers the fish with peppers, onion, tomato, jalapeno and wraps the works in banana leaf. It is cooked on a stove top but really, it’s roasting. She makes another sauce with oregano, habanero chili, onion, apple cider and olive oil, and fries up plantain to serve with the fish.
When the world’s gastronomic elite descended upon Tulum for that Noma pop-up (US$600 a pop), a chef who worked at Noma found Tulum had cast a spell on him and returned to become a partner and chef at Arca, a Yucatan-forward modern restaurant serving beautiful and innovative food.
We visited another relatively new contemporary restaurant, Nu. Both are all about cooking with
My grandmother ... had a garden, chickens, eggs, milk, cheese. My mother had a butcher shop and sold pork, chicken, chicharron, carnitas ... They loved cooking.
fire — flames leap in wild fandangos from wood-fired grills and the wood-fired oven glows like sunset.
The 10-year-old Hartwood restaurant also in the Tulum beach area, takes a very deep dive into Maya ingredients and traditions.
For a down-to-earth taste of the Yucatan, we went to Taqueria Honorio in town where the pork, seasoned with sour oranges and achiote, is buried and cooked in a pit oven overnight for 12 hours.
Santoyo Macedo plates the last of the dishes and sauces, and it’s ours to enjoy with a view of the turquoise Caribbean waters glinting jewel-like and throwing us breezy kisses. We eat with relish and gratitude, feasting on foods caught, picked and made fresh that day — all used in recipes thousands of years old.