"There must be a storm out there somewhere,” says Eric Werner, as our 20-foot launch pitches and yaws away from Tulum, motoring into the jewel-toned Caribbean. Werner, the 37-year-old chef/proprietor of Hartwood, has his eyes on the horizon, where the 40-pound tunas run, but our captain, a barrel-chested Mayan named Eddie, won’t take the boat much farther than the shallows of Soliman Bay. “Es muy feo,” Eddie says, watching the whitecaps roll our way, the inviting blue water darkening. Werner optimistically looks up at the sky instead, pointing to a swirling cluster of frigate birds whose presence, as hunters, promises schools of mature fish below: the dorado and mahi mahi and wahoo to which he’ll apply Yucatecan citruses, chilies, and strains of honey for any diner lucky enough to nab one of Hartwood’s 40 seats tonight. “It’s the biggest tease seeing all those birds out there,” he says. “Muchos pajaros, amigo. They’re throwing the fish to one another in the air! They’re taunting me!” Eddie smiles, amused by Werner’s mythologizing.
“Lo siento,” Eddie says. No fishing today.
Not one to be dissuaded by nature, having hacked the footprint for Hartwood out of the jungle with a machete six years ago along with his wife, Mya Henry, Werner suggests we anchor where we are and go snorkeling instead. “If we see turtles,” he says, “we’re jumping right in, okay?”
Suddenly Werner, in mask and fins, somersaults over the gunwale, makes a splash, and kicks away. Within minutes, the current carries us both hundreds of yards from the boat, making it hard to get back. Werner, always looking for the edible in every scenario—a phenomenon he calls “market eyes”—just wants to talk about fish as we bob up and down, taking shots of salty sea spray to the mouth. “Below us are a lot of the species we serve at the restaurant,” he says. “These shallow-water reefs are the nurseries, and it’s good to check them out when it’s too rough to fish.” He points out a mass of little silver swimmers darting over a head of coral. “Two hundred baby amberjack,” he says, before diving down for a closer look. Werner surfaces and smiles. The healthy bounty keeps him happy.
Since he relocated to Tulum from New York in 2010 with Henry, Werner’s outlook has been shaped by understanding, and embracing, the rhythms unique to his surroundings. Things in the Yucatán— going fishing and otherwise—don’t necessarily happen when you want them to; adapting to the unexpected matters. And while time coming nearly to a standstill is essential for vacationers, halted progress can make running an ambitious restaurant nearly impossible. But Werner and Henry wear that paradox well. To flip through their new book, Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán (out this month from Artisan), is to see what it looks like to move to paradise forever. Together, they’re sun-kissed and loose, a blend of tranquillity and energy. In person, though, their most stunning attribute is the work they’ve put into making Hartwood such a coveted reservation on Mexico’s east coast.
In the vernacular of contemporary global beach travel, it’s widely accepted that “Tulum” isn’t much more than the few miles of uneven jungle road known as the Carretera Tulum Boca Paila, and the businesses—and nature—lining both sides of it. Small hotels, dominated by palapas, stretch unassumingly along the ocean, subtly staged stores and restaurants opposite. A few tented campsites remain, signaling Tulum’s longtime identity as an off-the-grid retreat for hippies. But while Tulum still possesses a kind of idyllic quiet that no longer exists up the coast in more developed resorts like Cancún and Playa del Carmen, it has also acquired a reputation, among travelers in the know, for getting carried away with the same faux-bohemian lifestyle tropes that recently pushed its hippies aside in favor of hipsters eager to pay far more for yoga, juices, and essential oils. Now, those vacationers, with their established Instagram personas and fabulous raffia hats, are already off looking for the next Tulum, having left behind a commercial footprint for an enduring faux-bo beach resort. SoulCicleta, coming soon. Hartwood, however, feels like an antidote to all that, valuing timelessness over trend. “We have a vested interest,” says Henry, “in keeping Tulum the same place we fell in love with.”
Before Hartwood was Hartwood, Werner explains, it was a parcel of land nobody wanted on the wrong side of the Carretera Tulum Boca Paila: no ocean view, no refreshing sea breeze. Instead, there were decaying trees and thick vegetation, snakes and fire ants, fish swimming in a foot of swamp where the kitchen now stands. The air hung heavy and hot. Werner and Henry first visited together in 2009, and the trip—“no TV, no Internet, no phones, cut off from distractions,” according to Henry—sparked an idea: quit jobs, change course, move south. Werner had been a chef at Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill House, and before that he’d cooked at Peasant in Manhattan. Both restaurants use wood fires, Werner’s enduring lodestar, to make memorable, flavorful food. Henry, for her part, had been managing events at two busy hotels, The Standard and then the Soho Grand. Opening something together seemed like a better path than spending time apart. Leaving frigid, frenetic New York for the perpetually balmy, beachy Caribbean sounded brilliant. The next year they made the leap.
Hartwood, in its own way, echoes the surreal surroundings. “The concept was to blend into the environment as if we had been here forever,” says Henry. It only takes a minute at dinner to realize she’s succeeded in creating that kind of magic, what she calls a “humble picnic feel.” I watch as a server walks around the sunken dining area with a smoldering bucket of copal resin, smoking away the mosquitoes like a priestess swinging a holy censer. Padding over the white limestone pebbles, she shrouds the restaurant and its mezcal-drinking patrons in a dreamy, fragrant fog. The haze mingles with the darkness, with candlelight and the mesmerizing flames coming from the kitchen. And it’s hot, which can either feel uncomfortable or sexy. It’s a choice, really, so choose sexy. Order a piña habanero margarita. Lick the rim. Sweat. Stay.
Werner spends the night manning the oven and the grill. If it’s 90 degrees where I’m sitting, he’s feeling something much hotter. For the duration of service, standing between the fire and the kitchen’s centerpiece, a six-foot-high altar of woods and fruits—sour oranges, coconuts, saramuyo—he touches every dish, emphasizing that he’s working in a culture where products are crafted by hand. “Most everything in the restaurant was made by local artisans,” Henry says. “The tables, ironwork, oven, grill, our station for drying dishes, the jute-rope chairs. Our ladies sew the aprons that the staff wear. One employee came to work in a shirt onto which he had hand-embroidered our logo.”
Such artisanship isn’t a brand or lifestyle in Tulum. Rather, it’s life and an obvious lure for Americans, creatives from Brooklyn and Los Feliz who feel compelled to come here. In cooking, especially, there are no shortcuts. The taco stands in Tulum Centro sell meats that roast for hours. Tortillas are homemade and fresh. Crafts like hammocks are stitched with fine intricacies and sold in shops without names. One afternoon, on Werner’s recommendation, I find myself on an empty beach occupied by such hammocks and by Chemico, a shack of a restaurant in which a family makes ceviche. I order and, for the next 45 minutes, as the sole customer, hear the sounds of my meal’s preparation, along with rustling palms and crashing waves. While I wait, I rest in a hammock. And when I finish what amounts to a poignant meal, I get back in the hammock. This is the point of Tulum, I think: appreciating tradition while being blown around in a breeze.
"There must be a storm out there somewhere,” says Eric Werner, as our 20-foot launch pitches and yaws away from Tulum, motoring into the jewel-toned Caribbean. Werner, the 37-year-old chef/proprietor of Hartwood, has his eyes on the horizon, where the 40-pound tunas run, but our captain, a barrel-chested Mayan named Eddie, won’t take the boat much farther than the shallows of Soliman Bay. “Es muy feo,” Eddie says, watching the whitecaps roll our way, the inviting blue water darkening. Werner optimistically looks up at the sky instead, pointing to a swirling cluster of frigate birds whose presence, as hunters, promises schools of mature fish below: the dorado and mahi mahi and wahoo to which he’ll apply Yucatecan citruses, chilies, and strains of honey for any diner lucky enough to nab one of Hartwood’s 40 seats tonight. “It’s the biggest tease seeing all those birds out there,” he says. “Muchos pajaros, amigo. They’re throwing the fish to one another in the air! They’re taunting me!” Eddie smiles, amused by Werner’s mythologizing.
“Lo siento,” Eddie says. No fishing today.
Not one to be dissuaded by nature, having hacked the footprint for Hartwood out of the jungle with a machete six years ago along with his wife, Mya Henry, Werner suggests we anchor where we are and go snorkeling instead. “If we see turtles,” he says, “we’re jumping right in, okay?”
Suddenly Werner, in mask and fins, somersaults over the gunwale, makes a splash, and kicks away. Within minutes, the current carries us both hundreds of yards from the boat, making it hard to get back. Werner, always looking for the edible in every scenario—a phenomenon he calls “market eyes”—just wants to talk about fish as we bob up and down, taking shots of salty sea spray to the mouth. “Below us are a lot of the species we serve at the restaurant,” he says. “These shallow-water reefs are the nurseries, and it’s good to check them out when it’s too rough to fish.” He points out a mass of little silver swimmers darting over a head of coral. “Two hundred baby amberjack,” he says, before diving down for a closer look. Werner surfaces and smiles. The healthy bounty keeps him happy.
Since he relocated to Tulum from New York in 2010 with Henry, Werner’s outlook has been shaped by understanding, and embracing, the rhythms unique to his surroundings. Things in the Yucatán— going fishing and otherwise—don’t necessarily happen when you want them to; adapting to the unexpected matters. And while time coming nearly to a standstill is essential for vacationers, halted progress can make running an ambitious restaurant nearly impossible. But Werner and Henry wear that paradox well. To flip through their new book, Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán (out this month from Artisan), is to see what it looks like to move to paradise forever. Together, they’re sun-kissed and loose, a blend of tranquillity and energy. In person, though, their most stunning attribute is the work they’ve put into making Hartwood such a coveted reservation on Mexico’s east coast.
In the vernacular of contemporary global beach travel, it’s widely accepted that “Tulum” isn’t much more than the few miles of uneven jungle road known as the Carretera Tulum Boca Paila, and the businesses—and nature—lining both sides of it. Small hotels, dominated by palapas, stretch unassumingly along the ocean, subtly staged stores and restaurants opposite. A few tented campsites remain, signaling Tulum’s longtime identity as an off-the-grid retreat for hippies. But while Tulum still possesses a kind of idyllic quiet that no longer exists up the coast in more developed resorts like Cancún and Playa del Carmen, it has also acquired a reputation, among travelers in the know, for getting carried away with the same faux-bohemian lifestyle tropes that recently pushed its hippies aside in favor of hipsters eager to pay far more for yoga, juices, and essential oils. Now, those vacationers, with their established Instagram personas and fabulous raffia hats, are already off looking for the next Tulum, having left behind a commercial footprint for an enduring faux-bo beach resort. SoulCicleta, coming soon. Hartwood, however, feels like an antidote to all that, valuing timelessness over trend. “We have a vested interest,” says Henry, “in keeping Tulum the same place we fell in love with.”
Before Hartwood was Hartwood, Werner explains, it was a parcel of land nobody wanted on the wrong side of the Carretera Tulum Boca Paila: no ocean view, no refreshing sea breeze. Instead, there were decaying trees and thick vegetation, snakes and fire ants, fish swimming in a foot of swamp where the kitchen now stands. The air hung heavy and hot. Werner and Henry first visited together in 2009, and the trip—“no TV, no Internet, no phones, cut off from distractions,” according to Henry—sparked an idea: quit jobs, change course, move south. Werner had been a chef at Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill House, and before that he’d cooked at Peasant in Manhattan. Both restaurants use wood fires, Werner’s enduring lodestar, to make memorable, flavorful food. Henry, for her part, had been managing events at two busy hotels, The Standard and then the Soho Grand. Opening something together seemed like a better path than spending time apart. Leaving frigid, frenetic New York for the perpetually balmy, beachy Caribbean sounded brilliant. The next year they made the leap.
Hartwood, in its own way, echoes the surreal surroundings. “The concept was to blend into the environment as if we had been here forever,” says Henry. It only takes a minute at dinner to realize she’s succeeded in creating that kind of magic, what she calls a “humble picnic feel.” I watch as a server walks around the sunken dining area with a smoldering bucket of copal resin, smoking away the mosquitoes like a priestess swinging a holy censer. Padding over the white limestone pebbles, she shrouds the restaurant and its mezcal-drinking patrons in a dreamy, fragrant fog. The haze mingles with the darkness, with candlelight and the mesmerizing flames coming from the kitchen. And it’s hot, which can either feel uncomfortable or sexy. It’s a choice, really, so choose sexy. Order a piña habanero margarita. Lick the rim. Sweat. Stay.
Werner spends the night manning the oven and the grill. If it’s 90 degrees where I’m sitting, he’s feeling something much hotter. For the duration of service, standing between the fire and the kitchen’s centerpiece, a six-foot-high altar of woods and fruits—sour oranges, coconuts, saramuyo—he touches every dish, emphasizing that he’s working in a culture where products are crafted by hand. “Most everything in the restaurant was made by local artisans,” Henry says. “The tables, ironwork, oven, grill, our station for drying dishes, the jute-rope chairs. Our ladies sew the aprons that the staff wear. One employee came to work in a shirt onto which he had hand-embroidered our logo.”
Such artisanship isn’t a brand or lifestyle in Tulum. Rather, it’s life and an obvious lure for Americans, creatives from Brooklyn and Los Feliz who feel compelled to come here. In cooking, especially, there are no shortcuts. The taco stands in Tulum Centro sell meats that roast for hours. Tortillas are homemade and fresh. Crafts like hammocks are stitched with fine intricacies and sold in shops without names. One afternoon, on Werner’s recommendation, I find myself on an empty beach occupied by such hammocks and by Chemico, a shack of a restaurant in which a family makes ceviche. I order and, for the next 45 minutes, as the sole customer, hear the sounds of my meal’s preparation, along with rustling palms and crashing waves. While I wait, I rest in a hammock. And when I finish what amounts to a poignant meal, I get back in the hammock. This is the point of Tulum, I think: appreciating tradition while being blown around in a breeze.