About the author
Aldo Sosa
It is almost eight in the evening and the culinary choreography is preparing for another night of service. Menus rest on the tables, waiting to be studied by diners. Glasses are inspected with gloves to confirm their pristine finish. There are nervous glances, and understandably so: the reputation of the arriving guests poses a fundamental challenge: how do you delight the best chefs in the world?
The answer, as often happens with the important things in life, is found by looking inward, evoking one's homeland, awakening nostalgia, and paying tribute to age-old ingredients that travel from the milpa to the kitchen, transformed with passion and seasoning to represent a concept, a spirit, and a people rooted in corn, the land, and the joy of eating well.
Nothing compares to the warm embraces of Apapaxoa. Apapaxoa GastroCultural Festival Xcaret 2024 surprised the culinary world with one simple ingredient: the closeness between its special guests, renowned professionals from the gastronomic industry, and festival attendees, who delighted in learning from their experience and talent.
“Apapaxoa GastroCultural Festival is going to become Mexico's most important gastronomic event and the most outstanding one in the coming years. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the country. Its strength lies in its ability to bring people together, not only the chefs who are already part of its culinary offering, but also the guests who complemented the experience with dinners and talks,” said Elsie Méndez, founder of Los Sabores de México y el Mundo.
Interaction as a key element. For Antonio Bachour, named World's Best Pastry Chef by The Best Chef Awards in 2018 and 2022, the most rewarding part of participating in this event with other chefs is “talking, interacting, tasting their food, and learning from them. It is a mutually enriching learning experience. It inspires me, and I draw inspiration from all of them, from what they say and what they cook.” His words reveal a thirst for knowledge that no award can satisfy.
Giving beer the place it deserves. In keeping with Grupo Xcaret's passion for innovation, Apapaxoa elevated the status of the brewing arts in Mexico with a master class by Alejandro Ancona, CEO of Beer’s Cool school in Playa del Carmen.
Very pleased, he noted that beer is not commonly invited to haute-cuisine events, where mezcal brands, wines, or spirits are more typical. “So the most rewarding thing for me is for people to change their perception a little and see it through different eyes.”
What does it mean to cook? In a discipline that is both art and industry, passion and necessity, it is easy to lose one's way and give in to passing fashions, international trends, other people's goals, and social currents that distort the personal vision of those passionate about cooking. Events like Apapaxoa return us to the perspectives that move and motivate us.
Chef Rodrigo Ballesteros puts it this way: “You are always searching for remembrance. Because Mexican cuisine is an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, gastronomy becomes a cultural legacy, a continuous teaching passed from grandmother to mother. What we seek to express are those memories, great flavor, and ultimately to have all the ingredients come together as one.”
For chef Sergio Díaz, “cooking is a vehicle for expression and creativity. Cuisine brings many things together: economic, cultural… through cooking you can reach a thousand places and have an impact in many ways. Cooking is communication.”
Chef Miguel Bautista shares another perspective: “In my dishes I always incorporate nutrition, even if some people do not notice it. There are always products that provide protein, vitamins, and minerals. It is not only about creating a dish for its color or appearance; the main thing is to include those nutrients, to meet the needs of someone who is ill or follows a strict diet.”
From the pastry world, chef Daniel Rivera Río explains: “I am a pastry chef at heart, but I have a difficult relationship with sugar. Sometimes we make the mistake of adding sugar when flavor is missing. As pastry chefs we should not do that; we really have to work with fruit at its fullest expression.”
What does Mexico taste like? Mexico's culinary eclecticism reflects the vast culture found in every corner of the country: from a chocolate-rich mole that is also spicy, to a giant buried tamal served only during Day of the Dead, northern-style grilling where smoke is a key seasoning, and pozoles that reflect the personality of the cities where they were born.
For Jonatan Gómez Luna, Michelin-starred chef and member of the Hoteles Xcaret Gastronomic Collective, diversity is part of the essence of our country's cuisine. “Mexico tastes like many things. It tastes like chile; it is spicy, but it is sweet. At the same time, it tastes like chocolate and vanilla, chile and heat. It tastes like forests, but also like the sea, kind people, and warm embraces. A thousand flavors and a thousand forms of expression. Mexico is much more than a tortilla and corn. It is its people, its forests, its seas. It is unique.”