Travel Weekly editor in chief Arnie Weissmann was in the Yucatan for the Hokol Vuh feast. Read his FIRST, SECOND, THIRD and fourth dispatches; his final dispatch follows.
"Hokol Vuh," the name given to the five-day project that brought 18 chefs of international acclaim to the Yucatan last week to explore the state's culture and gastronomy, culminated on Friday evening in a nine-course charity event benefiting the nonprofit TAE Foundation.
The event's name is a reference to Popol Vuh, the sacred text of Mayan cosmology. The wordplay isn't easily explained, not even by event organizer Roberto Solis of the restaurant Nectar in Merida. Although "hokol" is not a word in Spanish or Mayan, the phrase is meant to evoke the image of a sacred text of Mayan cuisine.
The Hokol Vuh feast underway, with the Mayan ruins of Ake in the background.
It is Solis' intention that it will be an annual event held in the Yucatan "until people get bored with it. Then we can move it to other states (in Mexico)." This year, the 213 seats that were sold for $1,400 each went to an overwhelmingly Mexican crowd, but next year, he plans to promote it internationally (and, he said, it will be commissionable to travel agencies and tour operators).
The meal itself was an exciting gastronomic event, sited adjacent to dramatically lit Mayan ruins in Ake. It began with a reception that spilled into the field kitchen where chefs were putting the finishing touches on their courses. Guests mingled among them, took photos, quizzed them about ingredients or simply stood and watched one of the epicurean world's most creative assembly lines.
Chefs Esben Holmboe Bang (center, facing camera) of Maaemo in Oslo and Rosio Sanchez (right) of Hija de Sanchez in Copenhagen with the local crew assigned to assist them in assembling and plating 200-plus dishes of their course.
Once the guests were seated, a variety of live musicians accompanied the dinner from a stage at one end of the dining area. Guests Instagramed each course, consumed it, then compared tasting notes with fellow diners. Operations went smoothly, with scores of waiters swapping out cutlery, presenting each course (plated on objects ranging from rough-hewn stones to hollowed coconut shells), and keeping the wine and tequila flowing.
The locally sourced protein, from venison to octopus to crickets to oysters to sea snails to ants, was combined with regional fruits, herbs, roots, seeds, vegetables and starches in imaginative, artistic ways. The diners seemed thrilled, with the most biting criticism I heard being that one dish tasted too heavily of ingredients found primarily in another state.
Chef David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, Calif., brings out one of six pigs he and Carlo Mirarchi of Blanca in Brooklyn prepared for Hokol Vuh.
The charity aspect of the event was important; prior to the dinner, Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, who took on responsibility for choreographing the menu service, reminded the chefs to remember the big picture and the good that would come from the money raised. There was some discussion about keeping an eye on the cost of ingredients in order to make sure the maximum amount could be donated.
But ultimately, Hokol Vuh was much more than a charity dinner. What became clear as I traveled with the chefs over the preceding four days was how the friendship and camaraderie among people at the top of their field informed their final dishes. Many knew each other well personally, all knew each other by reputation. The youngest, Blaine Wetzel, 31, of the Willow's Inn on Lummi Island, Wash., could scarcely believe the "the incredible good fortune" he had to be paired to create a course with Michelin-starred chef Christian Puglisi of Reloe in Copenhagen. (Among them, the 18 chefs' restaurants currently have a collective 13 Michelin stars, and almost all the chefs had worked in one or more Michelin-starred kitchens.)
The finishing touch -- an edible flower -- is added to 200-plus bowls of an oyster dish, assembly-line fashion.
In the 30 hours leading up to the event, the chefs pitched in to help one another, tasting each other's sauces, chopping produce for those whose prep work was falling behind, wrapping tamales, scraping coconut shells. Everyone sought to be helpful, no matter how mundane the task.
The team that seemed the most carefree the evening before were Albert Adria, who worked alongside his brother Ferran at the legendary El Bulli, and now runs several renowned restaurants in Spain, and Paco Mendez of the Mexican restaurant Hoja Santa in Barcelona, in which Albert is also involved. They were going to make ice cream, and the assembly time the next day would be minimal.
Or so they thought, until they met the ice cream machine the following afternoon. "It's a toy," a frustrated Adria told me. "It can make only two liters in 30 minutes." And if that weren't enough, the freezer wasn't working. In the end, he and Mendez came up with a tropical fruit blend and sauce that worked well.
Barcelona chefs Paco Mendez of Hoja Santo and Albert Adria of Enigma testing an ice cream dish before the combination of a non-functional freezer and inadequate ice cream maker forced them to go in a different direction.
Since "hokol" has no known definition ("vuh" means "text" in Mayan), I tried to think of a meaning that could be assigned and that would sum up both the chef's private Yucatan tour and the public meal itself.
Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen and Roberto Solis of Nectar in Merida thank guests at the conclusion of Hokol Vuh.
As the meal wound down, Redzepi took the microphone to thank attendees. Echoing what several chefs had said at various points in the trip, he called the experience "life changing."
Considering what I heard and saw and what was ultimately conceived, prepared and consumed, my vote for the definition for Hokol Vuh would be "the book of transformation."
Now might be a good time to begin to think about which clients could be good candidates for a transformative meal in 2018; keep an eye on the website HokolVuh.com for updates.
TW photos by Arnie Weissmann