Chef-owner Eric Werner is smiling amiably as he shifts a huge grilled snapper into the wood-fired oven behind him. I’d been hoping, on the off-chance, to tag along on a foraging trip with him the following day. Kindly, but firmly, he tells me he is definitely going to spend his Sunday fishing, in the middle of nowhere, by himself. In other words, this journalist from London can do one – it’s his day off. He’s a chef with his priorities firmly in order.
Hartwood restaurant sits on the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, on a coastal road between jungle and sea. There’s no roof: it’s open to the stars – and the occasional downpour that provokes sudden closure. The sea air mingles with the scent of copal wood (burnt to repel mosquitos) and hardwood embers in the oven; when you run a restaurant in the jungle, the plumbing and mains electricity don’t reach. Thus the wood-fired oven and grill, solar panels and generator, and the blocks of ice in chest freezers that make up their refrigeration system.
Werner and his wife Mya Henry left New York for Tulum in pursuit of a more sustainable and meaningful lifestyle. They perhaps didn’t envisage themselves, machetes in hand, hacking through thick vegetation and rotting trees on a cheap patch of land infested with snakes and iguanas to build this restaurant. But what they have made is beautiful; it is at once a restaurant and a family – you can’t manage in an environment like this without strong relationships, and the couple work closely with the local community. As you’d expect, they buy from independent farmers and fishermen, but they listen, too, picking up local knowledge. Take the cenote underwater cave systems – these sinkholes were considered sacred by the ancient Mayans and are known as snorkelling and diving destinations, but less considered is how their crystal-clear fresh waters feed deep-rooted plants. The couple will tell you about the particular type of tern whose presence marks the arrival of certain schools of fish; or the sweet flesh of the pale-pink Maya prawns caught by shrimpers along the nearby lagoon with hand-cast nets; which fish you can only catch with a spear and a guide (robalo); and how to cut away the stressed flesh around the wound before cooking. There’s a knowledge and reverence for their ingredients that means every dish – cliched as it has become to say it – is cooked with care and passion.
On our visit, there’s a simple salad of jicama – the tuber tastes like a savoury apple – with oranges, seeds and mint cream. The Yucatan ceviche is done with wild snapper, local mezcal, lime and ginger. A whole yellowtail amberjack is grilled first, the wood smoke infusing it with flavour, then finished in the oven and served with Mayan spinach and roasted pineapple. The house special is octopus; its tentacles served charred and smoky with coriander dressing, roast potatoes sticky under the mollusc’s tender suckers, with pickled onions and greens. The setting is magical. The food? The food is unforgettable.
And it is food that you can recreate at home, as evidenced by their new cookbook. In such a basic kitchen, the cooking can’t be complicated – temperature control is achieved by logs added to or removed from the fire (and if you want heat quickly, you make sure the log has already been roasted so that it ignites fast). But there are tricks (“kitchen workhorses” Werner calls them) to layer flavour – great use is made of various pickles, flavoured salts and roasted oils (chilli, garlic, onion) for cooking and finishing. Superstar chef René Redzepi describes Hartwood as “the place I dream about”, partly because of Werner’s cooking, but also, no doubt, because it’s such a special place to eat. The risk of losing a night’s business in a downpour still won’t persuade them to install a roof since “the magic of serving food to a room of people sitting under the stars is worth the risk of the occasional rainout”.
Chef-owner Eric Werner is smiling amiably as he shifts a huge grilled snapper into the wood-fired oven behind him. I’d been hoping, on the off-chance, to tag along on a foraging trip with him the following day. Kindly, but firmly, he tells me he is definitely going to spend his Sunday fishing, in the middle of nowhere, by himself. In other words, this journalist from London can do one – it’s his day off. He’s a chef with his priorities firmly in order.
Hartwood restaurant sits on the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, on a coastal road between jungle and sea. There’s no roof: it’s open to the stars – and the occasional downpour that provokes sudden closure. The sea air mingles with the scent of copal wood (burnt to repel mosquitos) and hardwood embers in the oven; when you run a restaurant in the jungle, the plumbing and mains electricity don’t reach. Thus the wood-fired oven and grill, solar panels and generator, and the blocks of ice in chest freezers that make up their refrigeration system.
Werner and his wife Mya Henry left New York for Tulum in pursuit of a more sustainable and meaningful lifestyle. They perhaps didn’t envisage themselves, machetes in hand, hacking through thick vegetation and rotting trees on a cheap patch of land infested with snakes and iguanas to build this restaurant. But what they have made is beautiful; it is at once a restaurant and a family – you can’t manage in an environment like this without strong relationships, and the couple work closely with the local community. As you’d expect, they buy from independent farmers and fishermen, but they listen, too, picking up local knowledge. Take the cenote underwater cave systems – these sinkholes were considered sacred by the ancient Mayans and are known as snorkelling and diving destinations, but less considered is how their crystal-clear fresh waters feed deep-rooted plants. The couple will tell you about the particular type of tern whose presence marks the arrival of certain schools of fish; or the sweet flesh of the pale-pink Maya prawns caught by shrimpers along the nearby lagoon with hand-cast nets; which fish you can only catch with a spear and a guide (robalo); and how to cut away the stressed flesh around the wound before cooking. There’s a knowledge and reverence for their ingredients that means every dish – cliched as it has become to say it – is cooked with care and passion.
On our visit, there’s a simple salad of jicama – the tuber tastes like a savoury apple – with oranges, seeds and mint cream. The Yucatan ceviche is done with wild snapper, local mezcal, lime and ginger. A whole yellowtail amberjack is grilled first, the wood smoke infusing it with flavour, then finished in the oven and served with Mayan spinach and roasted pineapple. The house special is octopus; its tentacles served charred and smoky with coriander dressing, roast potatoes sticky under the mollusc’s tender suckers, with pickled onions and greens. The setting is magical. The food? The food is unforgettable.
And it is food that you can recreate at home, as evidenced by their new cookbook. In such a basic kitchen, the cooking can’t be complicated – temperature control is achieved by logs added to or removed from the fire (and if you want heat quickly, you make sure the log has already been roasted so that it ignites fast). But there are tricks (“kitchen workhorses” Werner calls them) to layer flavour – great use is made of various pickles, flavoured salts and roasted oils (chilli, garlic, onion) for cooking and finishing. Superstar chef René Redzepi describes Hartwood as “the place I dream about”, partly because of Werner’s cooking, but also, no doubt, because it’s such a special place to eat. The risk of losing a night’s business in a downpour still won’t persuade them to install a roof since “the magic of serving food to a room of people sitting under the stars is worth the risk of the occasional rainout”.