A historical area, nourished by the sea and the forest, and modified by a new generation of chefs can be found along Mexico's central Gulf Coast.
The start of the rainy season in Veracruz is signaled by the opening of dense clusters of white, star-shaped blossoms known as flor de Trueno, or "thunder flowers," each May when the first thunderclaps rumble the cloud forests of Mexico's eastern Sierra Madre mountains. This state, a sickle of hills and beaches on the Gulf Coast, is teeming with coffee, vanilla, and honey, and it is a location of extraordinary plenty all year long. However, everyday downpours during the summer months cause hundreds of different flower species to burst into bloom.
On a warm afternoon in April whom I met at her house in Xalapa, the state capital of Veracruz, Raquel Torres Cerdán, a 72-year-old anthropologist, cookbook author, and former restaurant, said, "There are 52 edible flowers in Veracruz alone. And we eat them — we don't decorate with them." She has been holding classes about the cuisine of her home state, a subject she has studied for more than 40 years, in her kitchen for the past six years.
From an early age, Torres traveled with her family to the hills surrounding Xalapa. In her twenties, as an anthropology student and worker for the Rural Development Program of the federal government, Torres expanded her excursions to more remote areas of Veracruz. Even though she began working in her father's restaurant when she was just 13 years old, the variety of items she came across on those subsequent excursions surprised her. They were a reflection of the diverse array of fruits, vegetables, seafood, and game found in Veracruz as well as the rites and civilizations that had flourished there for three millennia, starting with the Olmecs, the region's first significant civilization.
However, Torres claims that it has never been easy to uncover examples of that diversity outside of domestic kitchens. She combed through cookbooks dating back as far as the 18th and 19th centuries after opening her second restaurant in Xalapa's historic district in the early 1980s, but she couldn't find any recipes that called for, say, those thunder flowers, an ingredient frequently used by many of Veracruz's 14 Indigenous communities.
We were sitting in her cozy ocher kitchen when she said, "I thought, well, of course, these books were created for people who could read...which is to say, for the rich." That's when I started to worry about trying something new.
Torres had prepared six dishes, all of which were typical of the area around Xalapa. She filled lacquer-shiny pear-green jalapenos with a pale-yellow mash of sweet plantains, then drenched them in a goat-milk cheese and cream sauce. Young black beans and masa dumplings that were as sticky and elastic as gnocchi were simmered in a small clay pot. A pitcher of caa-spiked, highly-flavored nectar prepared from wild capulin, an astringent stone fruit that like a cross between açai and black currant, lay on the sideboard. It was as vivid as a bruise. Torres offered a straightforward dessert of zapote negro, a fruit drenched in honey and orange juice with flesh as dark as molasses and decadent as overripe avocado.
These dishes contradicted my preconceived notions of what Veracruzano cuisine could be, despite how straightforward they were. My understanding of a few recognizable foods was minimal when I first arrived the day before my lunch with Torres. I had consumed chilpachole de Kaiba, a spicy soup created with ingredients indigenous to the Sotavento region in the steamy south of the state, including chiles, corn, and crab. Gorditas, corn-flour tortillas fried in oil till they ballooned up like golden balloons, were what I'd been bingeing on. Naturally, I also knew fish a la veracruzana, a dish prepared with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ingredients like pickled chiles, tomatoes, olives, and capers. However, although becoming popular elsewhere in Mexico, these foods only partially reflect the geographic and cultural richness of Veracruz.
After our meal, I questioned Torres about what, if anything, characterized Veracruz's culinary identity. She shook her head while giggling carelessly. It's local cultures, local cuisines, and local identities that we can't speak about in Veracruz, she remarked. "Who is cooking, not what they prepare, is what distinguishes a cuisine,"
Erik Guerrero Arias is to blame for how I found myself at Torres' home. The most well-known chef in the region, his most recent eatery, Namik, debuted in the state's largest city, Veracruz, also known as El Puerto, in early July. We had previously met for coffee to discuss the new project in Mexico City, where I have lived since 2016. He spoke eloquently on the state of Veracruz's many charms with an evangelical zeal during a long, meandering chat. He had an easy convert in me.
From the Olmecs' massive stone heads at San Lorenzo in the southeast to the Totonacs' monuments and smiling clay dolls at El Taj in the state's north, the region had supported a succession of Indigenous civilizations before the Spanish arrived on Mexican shores in 1518. These civilizations left behind an artistic and archaeological record of astounding sophistication. Here, the Spanish founded their first permanent settlements in Mexico, including El Puerto, which is currently one of the busiest ports in the world and served for centuries as the main entry point for immigrants coming from the east.
Guerrero, 38, was raised in Poza Rica, an oil town in northern Veracruz, which is known for its abundance of vanilla orchids and citrus trees. He spent his formative years working in the family snack shop, taking orders, giving out change, and learning how to fry plantains and steamed tamales. After working at several restaurants in Mexico and France, he was hired as the executive chef of Pujol in Mexico City in 2011, which launched his career. He then opened his restaurant, the seafood-centric Dos, in El Puerto.
Five years later, he launched Nuestra Pesca ("Our Fish"), a sustainable fishing initiative that works with fishermen to enhance the quality of their catches while teaching chefs and customers about the variety of Gulf species. Shortly after, he met Torres, and they instantly clicked as kindred spirits. Torres is consistently referred to by Guerrero as La Maestra, the instructor or the master. For her part, Torres treats Guerrero with the condescending devotion of an elder sister. Her remark regarding the flowers? That was done for his gain.
Guerrero has struggled to broaden his consumers' gastronomic vocabulary. He claimed that at Dos, he and his staff first struggled to sell fish that most residents of El Puerto had become accustomed to seeing as corriente, or common; this was a complaint also made by Abraham Guillén Arévalo, chef and proprietor of Mardel, a beachside restaurant situated in El Puerto. Guerrero claims that selling clients on the coast on the value of the products carried down from the mountains, such as chayote root, which resembles a smooth-skinned celeriac, lantern-shaped rosella, or gooseberries, and long-fingered blossoms of the church palm was even more difficult.
People were used to drinking agua de jamaica, seafood cocktails, and Pescado a la veracruzana, he claimed. "We had people stand up and leave all the time. We would offer this exquisite agua de rosella, and they would complain."
Guerrero decided that at Namik he would create a menu to highlight ingredients and methods that even individuals who grew up in Veracruz rarely have the opportunity to taste, in part because of Torres. Guerrero and I then traveled through the verdant hills and riparian south of Veracruz using Namik's menu as a loose guide. Along the way, we met and occasionally traveled with cooks, farmers, scientists, and writers who were all trying to spread a more thorough understanding of their state's culinary identity.
On my first morning in Veracruz, I traveled into the coffee region to meet Guerrero at Finca Sierra del Mar, Emilio Velez Quintero's experimental farm. Vélez works together with nearby farmers to enhance the quality and yield of their harvests while also cultivating coffee, and corn, and raising pigs, and sheep. We savored deep pulls of espresso flavored with green peppercorn and dried apricots that Vélez offers in his shop in El Puerto as the snow-capped dome of Citlatépetl, Mexico's highest mountain, appeared to float over receding slopes the color of jade. For his part, Guerrero intends to purchase from Velez not just coffee but also fruits, vegetables, and whatever else he can produce.
I own a restaurant. This man provides the coffee I serve, but if he wants to grow fruit, I'll take what I can of that product, too, Guerrero said. "As a culture, we've lost our potential for symbiosis. "When you start counting pesos, those are the relationships you lose."
The following day, we continued driving to the shore, where El Puerto's gregarious urbanity is announced by its storage tanks, cranes, and the infinite swath of cargo containers. This was one of Mexico's most multicultural metropolitan hubs for centuries, serving as the entry point for people fleeing war-torn Europe and the Middle East as well as men and women who had been taken as slaves from western Africa. Along with customs offices maintained by affluent merchants who imported opulent items from Europe and gave back shiploads of cacao and chiles, wealthy monastic orders constructed convents and churches.
After supper at Mardel, where Guillén offered us freshly caught Gulf fish in three transcendently simple versions (deep fried, a la veracruzana, and straight off the grill), I woke up early the next morning to take a stroll through El Puerto's historic district. Petrified coral blocks, which had previously served as the city's main building material, shone white through layers of plaster that had been weakened by prevailing winds from the north and extreme humidity. In varying degrees of romantic deterioration, ornate 19th-century homes, Modernist apartment structures, and austere colonial churches coexisted side by side.
I had breakfast at the Mercado Unidad Veracruzana, a 1942 Bauhaus titan located beyond the historic district. I took a seat at the frantic, 52-year-old stand that was called after its fearsome owner, Doa Bella, and placed an order for a gordita dulce, a sweet treat consisting of masa that had been spiked with piloncillo, or unrefined cane sugar, and served in a mole negro bath. As I separated it, it let forth a sigh of nixtamal-scented steam.
The following morning, as we were leaving Veracruz, we stopped for a superb cold brew at Antonino's, possibly the greatest of the city's few third-wave coffee shops. We then drove across vast fields and open ocean before stopping for lunch at the 30-year-old Restaurante Tella in the town of Alvarado. It is situated above the slate-blue Alvarado Lagoon in a run-down concrete cage. Doa Tella, the bold, boisterous proprietor, produced dishes enhanced by the seafood caught by the fisherman who live by the water. She presented the state's seaside wealth in a more modest way than I had in El Puerto.
Fresh tortillas were served first, covered in lard, refried beans, baby shrimp, and crab meat. The following dish was the house specialty, Arroz a la tumbaga, a soupy rice dish flavored with tomato, garlic, and oregano and studded with sea snails. She informed me that the dish's origins may be traced back to the ancient launches, where fishermen would throw whatever they could find into a pot for a simple and fast lunch. Tella laughed and spat an obscenity, "A la tumbada is like a la chingada." It's something that any fool could create.
We traveled from Alvarado inland down the Papaloapan River to the community of Tlacotalpan, which was formerly a significant port where ships from Europe would come carrying almonds and Carrera marble and leave carrying pineapple, cotton, and sugar. Early in the 20th century, Tlacotalpan experienced a collapse as river transportation was rendered unnecessary by the Tehuantepec Railroad. Tlacotalpan's calm roads, which are peculiar to Veracruz, are lined by 18th-century mansions painted in brilliant pink and lilac, green, and blue. They are preserved in the amber of unexpected irrelevance. As much a tribute to the town's ancient richness as the French floor tiles of the lovely, if decaying, Museo Salvador Ferrando, which is devoted to the eponymous painter, older inhabitants open their doors to sell the village's famous dulce de Almendra, an almond confection comparable to marzipan.
We spent the evening drinking ice-cold beers and Doritos, sweet concoctions made with milk, fruit, and potentially harmful amounts of caa, at Blanca Nieves, the village's oldest cantina. Seven-ounce Coronitas sweated away on our table for hours as a couple of young musicians played Son Jarocho, the mellow, rhythmic folk music that has its roots in the cattle pastures of Veracruz from generations ago.
After Tlacotalpan, the roadway curves through fields of sugarcane and pastureland before a gentle ascent into hills that rise from the ocean. Tropical vegetation surrounds crystalline natural lakes. We made a pit stop outside of San Andrés Tuxtla at the rural homestay Yambigapan, which is set on the rim of the Laguna Encantada, also known as the Enchanted Lagoon, a clear lagoon inside a long-ago volcano crater. Nidia Hernández Medel and her brother Bruno founded Yambigapan on two acres of land that their parents had purchased in the early 1990s as a retirement home.
Hernández's heritage is a fusion of cultures and identities, like that of the majority of residents in this region of Veracruz known as Los Tuxtlas. It is a reflection of the Indigenous peoples who once lived in the area as well as the population of African heritage, which by the 18th century made up as much as one-fourth of the population in southern Veracruz. The Afro-Mexican culture of Mexico is now centered in Los Tuxtlas, where it is evident in a variety of religious practices (best observed at the Iglesia de la Virgen del Carmen in Catemaco), traditional medical procedures (sometimes mistaken for witchcraft or Brujeria), and, of course, gastronomy.
Like Guerrero, Hernández sees Torres as a role model, and like La Maestra, she teaches in her kitchen. The meals at Yambigapan astonished me more than the mountain fare I'd tried in Xalapa a few days before, though. Tripe curls that had been cooked and then swiftly smoked on the barbecue over aromatic guava leaves had the electrifying flavor of Southeast Asian hill tract food when combined with raw garlic, cilantro, and lime. Mogomogo, which is made with mashed plantains or taro and is heavily flavored with swine lard, has a Caribbean flavor.
All of these foods, according to Hernández, allude to the past of her native country in one way or another. From Asia, Spanish traders brought cloves and cumin to Europe. Formerly enslaved West Africans who founded free colonies in southern Veracruz as early as 1618 and later Caribbean immigrants imitated the yams of their ancestral country by using locally grown viandas, or tubers, such taro, and sweet potato. These same Black foodways gave rise to the combining of fat and sugar in masa. She informed me that even the Arroz a la tumbaga that we had had with Doa Tella was a Creole jambalaya-inspired dish rather than a Spanish paella, possibly introduced to Alvarado by the ships that historically connected the town with New Orleans.
Hernández believes that disseminating these recipes is an important step in the cultural preservation of a group whose history is all too frequently left out of Mexico's official history. Over breakfast, she said to me, "When you offer someone a recipe, you're giving away a part of yourself." As I sipped thick taro atole, a comforting substitute for oatmeal produced by combining one ingredient from the Asia-Pacific region with an indigenous dish from the corn-rich central lowlands of Mexico, toucans soared between avocado trees. "Without understanding a recipe's backstory, you can't understand it.
Coscomatepec is a town located in Citlaltepetl's folded skirts, and on my last day in Veracruz, I drove back into the central hills to visit the Monday market there. Guerrero first traveled through this region around the time he met Torres, and he said, "It changed the way I see things." He added that the trip broadened his vocabulary of ingredients in much the same way that he hopes Namik can broaden that of his clients in
He pointed out ingredients he planned to use at Namik: purple leaves of yerba mora for a fish-head broth; calabaza melocotón, an indigenous squash that tastes more like melon than most melons; and a delicate pudding sprinkled with cacao nibs. Guerrero laughed with vendors, as at ease as if this were the market of the town he'd grown up in.
None of these dishes are particularly traditional, but tradition, especially in Veracruz, is never constant, Guerrero told me.
He said to me that morning, "The truth is, I don't know Veracruz at all. There's still so much for us to discover."
travelling to Veracruz
Places to Stay
Hotel Emporio: Located in El Puerto, this 223-room high-rise boasts three swimming pools and guest rooms with views of the harbor and the San Juan de Ula fortification from the sixteenth century. Doubles start from $51.
Cabins start at $30 at Los Amigos, a cozy resort in Los Tuxtlas on a mangrove-lined lagoon just inland from the beach.
Mesón de Alférez Xalapa: Double rooms start at $40, and a sumptuous breakfast is included with your stay.
On her property in San Andrés Tuxtla, next to Laguna Encantada, owner Nidia Hernández Medel provides two basic, unadorned cabins as well as cooking workshops. Doubles start at $30.
Places to Eat
Ay! Apaa: 103 Calle Antonio M. Carlón, Boca del Ro, is a little neighborhood fish restaurant with delectable coctéles and ceviches.
Café Sierra del Mar: The Emilio Velez farm's outlet in El Puerto delivers excellent coffee and a satisfying, straightforward breakfast.
Doa Bella: The best gorditas in El Puerto are served at this stand on Calle Juan Soto near Nicolás Bravo in the Mercado Unidad Veracruzana.
Model: Get a seat on the terrace that looks out over the Gulf of Mexico and order fresh, regional whole fish and ceviche.
Name: With entrees ranging from $14 to $20, Erik Guerrero's new restaurant is preserving Veracruz's culinary history.
Try the shrimp-and-crab tortillas and cool off with an iced beer at Restaurante Tella, located at km 1 on the Federal Alvarado Veracruz Highway. Entrées range from $4 to $7.
Entrées range from $5 to $24, and it is located in the nearby coffee town of Coatepec.
Steps to Take
Accoyo Taller de Cocina: Schedule a class in Raquel Torres Cerdán's Xalapa home to delve into Veracruz's rich cultural and culinary history.
The Monday Market in Coscomatepec is a wonderful location to experience some of the best tamales and barbacoa in Veracruz.
One of Mexico's best anthropological museums, Museo de Antropologia Xalapa, uses artifacts and sculptures to depict the history of the Indigenous cultures of Veracruz.
Museo Salvador Ferrando: This charming town museum, which has the name of a Tlacotalpan-born 19th-century painter, is full of artifacts and is worth a quick visit if only for its dusty, antiquated ambiance.
No Place Like Veracruz was the headline of a version of this article that was first published in the September 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.