Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks.
Today we have a special guest, Rosana Toro.
She's living in Yucatan, Mexico and she's a product designer and now she became kind
of like a restaurant experience designer.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Could it be described like that?
I've been trying to figure out how to decipher that.
Like I don't describe what I do.
It's like branding consultancy and experience consultancy in hospitality.
I don't really know.
These are different words for the same thing, right?
Exactly.
So how was the transition from being a product designer to start designing experiences or
branding for restaurants, bars and hotels?
How did this happen?
It was very organic, but also basically it just happened because I didn't really know
what to do with my life, right?
So I started studying product design and industrial design, but then my mom got sick back in Venezuela
so I had to go back and industrial design there, product design was not a very good
career there.
So I started studying graphic design and I spent some time working in graphic design,
branding, UX and UI.
I hated it so much.
I had like anxiety attacks over my work and so I decided like it was time for a change
and I applied for a job at my current agency, V&L.
And while working there, like we realized like my boss actually goes like, you know
what?
You're very good at like coming up with ideas for things.
And like we started experimenting with me working in concept development and then that
just like evolved into the whole thing that I really love working with, with the scene,
with hospitality and I love like pampering people, right?
So we just started organically like designing experiences for our clients and clients started
coming to us for those experiences and they're like, wait, no, you're helping us develop
like an even more complete product when you do experiences.
Let's do this.
And just it organically became helping clients to design the experience for their restaurants
or the hotels.
It was weird but fun.
Do you have like an interesting story of a project, like about the whole process of,
I don't know, like coming up with a concept for a new restaurant or how is it processed?
Do you get a briefing with some key ideas and then you develop the whole thing or do
the clients already know exactly what they want?
Yeah, it varies from client to client.
But usually what happens is like clients, they come to us and they're like, oh, we have
an idea for this restaurant.
We were like, oh, okay.
And we have this first meeting, which is sort of like the brief.
We call it the kickoff meeting, right?
But that's like a therapy session.
Usually we'll talk to clients for hours and we'll be like, okay, so what do you want to
do?
Okay, but then what do you really like?
Like what really are your dreams?
What do you really enjoy to get inspired by?
Tell me about your mother.
Yeah, yeah.
Like we've had clients talk to us about their dead siblings, you know, and how they've been
inspired to do what they really want.
It really does become a therapy session.
And it's very like clients have cried in our in our meetings, but it's so nice because
it's like this very emotional process and you get to know people very deeply.
And when you know people very deeply and you know what really excites them, you can help
them develop like very authentic concepts.
So once we get to really know them, we'll be like, okay, the places that are most successful
and like last through time are usually places that are a very honest reflection of what
clients are and who the clients are.
Right.
And especially nowadays, people are looking for more authentic things, for more real things.
And so having a very honest reflection of who the person is helps the brand.
So we do that.
We try to understand who they really are and create this whole concept that reflects them
and their passions and what they like.
So we do this first therapy session.
And from then we help like develop the concept and we'll do experiences, we'll do naming
design, like we develop the personality of the brand, the voice, and we try to use like
the client's words and the things that really inspire them to make something very real that
they feel personally represented by.
Yeah, I guess like, well, I don't know if the restaurants that you work with are chef
oriented or not, but I guess restaurants where the chef has a strong personality, like the
chef becomes a character and the restaurant becomes his environment, right?
Yeah.
And yeah.
And then you build like this whole ecosystem around, yeah, like a story.
Exactly.
Well, what's the role that stories plays in this context?
Eric, this is like my favorite question because I have this obsession, right?
We're all made of stories.
There's this quotes that I love.
I can't remember who said it right now.
I will.
But basically it says like, some people think that we're made of atoms, but I think we're
made of stories.
I mean, I love that quote because I think that's very true.
We're all made of stories.
And when you create a deep story for a restaurant, people connect to that very deeply.
And that's why they get excited about brands.
When they find the story that they can connect with, that makes it very real.
That's why we connect to people more than we connect to things, right?
Because there's a story behind it.
So creating a story means creating connection.
And I think that's very exciting.
Yeah.
Also going back to stories, for me, it's super interesting when you can tell a story through
a dish with very simple elements.
I love that so much.
I saw this dish.
It was from a Mexican chef.
I can't remember now exactly who it was, but it was just a two element dish.
You know, it was the plate and then you had like a cactus sorbet and volcanic salt.
That's it.
Wow.
You know, and just with two elements, you tell a story and you evoke an image, right?
This was like a palate cleanser.
Just one of these sorbets that you have between courses in a tasting menu.
And for me, this is so clever, you know, like just to combine these two elements and it's
almost poetic and just two words, right?
Like volcano and cactus.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
I really want to try that.
You have to remember who the chef is because I really want to try that.
Yeah.
I'll have to check it out.
Like I give a lecture once a year about Latin America and Vanguard and cooking.
And this is one of the examples I show when I talk about new Mexican chefs.
So it will be easy to find the reference.
Please do.
There's actually this restaurant here that was just named like the best restaurant in
Media, the city where I'm living in.
It's called the Micaela and they have this, they have this dessert dish and it's all corn
because you know, corn is very important for like Mexican culture.
Of course.
Yes.
And specifically Mayans believe that we're made of corn.
Like corn is divine.
In Mayan heritage, like the gods didn't steal fire to give to people.
They stole corn.
Corn is very, very special.
So they have this corn dessert and it's all, it's just corn, but it's corn in different
presentations.
So it's corn, ice cream with caramel corn, with corn dust and a little like corn cookies.
And it's all like different presentations and different textures, but it's all corn
and it's so, so good.
You have to, if you ever do come, you have to try it.
I had this amazing dessert, Cosme, which is the Daniela Sotines restaurant in New York,
which is a little associated restaurant of Olvera.
And her signature dessert is this corn foam inside of a corn meringue.
And it also, it also has ashes of the corn external leaf, you know, like, it's again,
like, again, this is like a story, you know, you're putting different elements and, and
serving corn sweet, you know, and it's not that sweet that dessert actually.
But that makes it better, right?
Yeah, of course.
I like not so sweet dessert.
I even like savory desserts at some point, which is also something that you can get.
Do you have any examples of projects where you help a client completely change an initial
idea into something unique or different or perhaps something different from the initial
idea?
I do.
I'm not the client per se, but I can tell the story.
It was a hotel brand we were working with and we were developing a bunch of restaurants
and experiences for them.
And they wanted to do like a kids restaurant, right?
And the initial idea was just that, kids restaurant.
But when we were doing the research and trying to figure out the concept, we got really stuck
with the ice cream museum in Los Angeles and New York.
And we were like, you know what, why, why, why does it have to be just a restaurant?
If it's for kids, it has to be more than that.
Like it should be a very immersive experience.
And so we changed the whole thing and we turned that into like house of possibilities.
And so this place, it became a fun house with food basically.
And so in every different branch of the hotel, the restaurant is different.
Like sometimes it's space themed, sometimes it's ice cream themed, sometimes it's candy
themed, it's dinosaur themed.
Because the whole idea that it's like an imaginary, right?
So the whole thing is a reflection of children's imagination with experiences reflecting this
imagination through food.
But the whole thing is that it has to be more than food because it's for children.
And like kids are not really into just eating, right?
They have to like get excited about things, be entertained.
So like we made it a whole thing to be like food is part of the experience, but it's not
the whole experience.
Like imagination is the experience.
And they got so excited about that.
They just wanted like, you know, a kids restaurant that served like fish sticks.
And we're like, no, it has to be imagination and exploding and be like a fun house.
And they did turn it into that.
It's been amazing actually to see it like become a reality and how they've applied it.
They've done it very well.
And they build their minds, right?
Because yeah, that's crazy.
It was fun.
During this process, what are the key elements that you consider when you're coming up with
the solutions?
So how do you get there?
Which are the criteria as you apply?
It's like a whole thing, right?
Because one of the first criteria, like I said, it has to be a very authentic reflection
of like the clients who's doing it, but also like it has to be enjoyable for their clients.
But it's just like the one thing we always come back to is that it has to be like exciting,
maybe not exciting, like sentimentally motivated.
Like it has to arouse your feeling.
Like emotional, like something that moves your emotions.
Yeah, exactly.
And that can be positive, it can be peaceful, it can be whatever, whatever.
There has to be like an emotional aspect to it.
Again, to create this connection to get people excited.
And I mean, yes, of course we have to consider like trends, even though it's cool to ignore
trends, but we do have to consider them.
We have to consider things that practical applications, how it can be done.
Because sometimes we get very excited.
We're like, oh yeah, it's a, I don't know.
We sometimes want to do like restaurants inside, I don't know, bounces, but we can't do that
all the time, right?
So we have to consider how it can actually be a bite and be real and just how we can
do things that can be maintained throughout time and still always like get people motivated
to want to come back.
One of the things that happens at restaurants, right, is that if you have like a fixed venue
and that's it, maybe clients will only go a few times, they'll get bored and want to
try something else.
So we also have to consider things that make people want to come back.
Things like, you know, an evolving manual events, things that happen.
We want restaurants to be more than restaurants, right?
We want them to be this whole experience so that people get excited and always want to
return and always want to recommend a place.
A good place is always reinventing itself.
It's always evolving.
Like a person, right?
If you're a person and you say exactly the same thing for your whole life, it's a boring
thing ever.
The same thing applies to restaurants.
They don't evolve like people naturally do, they'll die.
Like movement and evolution is very important.
Yeah, I've seen many restaurants completely change throughout their history, like having
like different epochs, different faces.
This whole conversation reminds me a lot of El Barri group in Barcelona, Albert Adrias
group before COVID.
He closed most of his restaurants after COVID.
But I mean, this was like a constellation of, I don't know, five or six different restaurants,
each one with a complete clear identity, each one different from each other.
And each one, I think that they had their story, their visual identity.
Perhaps I would say the most transversal aspect would be photography.
I think the photography was equal for all of them, but the content was different.
But I think all of these elements, like the style-
Yeah, you would see El Mori and you would see the other ones.
The style of the videos, the style of the pictures, even the dishware and everything,
I think that this builds to the identity of our restaurant.
Totally, totally.
And you have to consider those like small details, like the details make the whole place,
right?
I don't know, do you know, of course, Central Peru?
Yes, of course.
I've been there.
So good.
I'm obsessed with their plateware, you know, their dishware.
Sometimes like those that he found while foraging in the woods and it's broken plates and it's
things like that.
Like that tells the story too.
That tells the story of discovery, of like actually showing the place where you live.
Like the whole thing in Central is reflecting like different heights in Peru, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, like the menu, just for the audience that doesn't know, like the menu, you will
get a tasting menu and each course will have a different altitude.
So it could be minus five meters under the sea level.
Then you have 2000 meters above sea level and each course represents like a microclimate
and a microcosm just, you know, expressed through ingredients in a dish.
And also, as you say, each dish looks like this unique landscape that represents a microclimate
of Peru.
So it's like a journey through the whole country in a tasting menu, which in itself is amazing.
It's a super clear storyline that anyone can identify with.
And sometimes like the dishes, like they're artisanal dishes from the locations where
the food is from, right?
And then other times it's rocks from where the food was from and things like, well, there's
this one dish I'm obsessed with that is like frozen piranha heads.
Ah, piranhas.
Ah, you mean the dishware from Central?
Yes, I know.
I know that piece of plate.
Yeah.
And they're like screaming, you know, like the piranhas are like opening them up.
Yeah.
Like I'm a good friend of the Valderrama brothers who are the two head chefs.
I think they're now in Mule, not anymore in Central.
They were actually the ones.
Actually one of them came to work in Mexico.
He's starting to develop a restaurant with Iscared, the Votelchi.
Oh, okay.
Nice.
Well, I was like, how to say, we were on the same exchange program.
One of them, well, while I was, I first came to the Basque Country doing an exchange at
the Basque Culinary Center.
So we were on the same program.
Oh, that's so cool.
And that's where I met him.
Actually the time I went to Central, they invited me the whole menu and it was just
like a waiting time between flights.
I had like five hours waiting time in Peru.
So I went to Central, had a tasty menu and went back to the airport.
I am very jealous of you.
That's a great time to spend that wait.
Yeah.
It was a nice waiting time.
No, no, I have a super nice memory.
This was actually the old Central, not the new building.
I don't know how the new one looks like, but that was a really nice one for sure.
That's amazing.
Actually, I've only seen pictures of the new one also, so I can't say.
So what would you say that are emerging trends and themes that you're noticing in the restaurant
branding world?
There are a few things, right?
Like in general, hospitality, obviously being sustainable, I love that it's becoming a trend.
Yeah, it becomes, it means that a lot of people are green washing what they do.
But in general, like trying to be sustainable is actually becoming like the new luxury,
right?
Like things are good if they're sustainable.
People who want to go to an expensive place, if it's not sustainable, they'll be like,
no, it's not good.
And I think that's actually amazing to be a trend.
I really do hope that becomes a standard rather than just a trend.
And the other thing I see like more and more is authenticity.
In restaurants specifically, people are looking more and more for places that are either like
an authentic reflection of the cuisine of a place or of the chef.
Yep.
Like restaurants that tell stories are becoming very, very trendy.
Like recently Tatiana in New York has won a lot of awards.
And the whole thing with Tatiana is that it's an autobiographical menu.
So the chef, he has Latino parents, but he also has African, his father's African, his
mom is Latina.
She's from Jamaica, I believe, but he grew up in New York.
So the menu at the restaurant is a mixture of Nigerian food.
I think it's Nigerian, Jamaican food, Dinidad and Tobago food and food from New York.
A lot of like Bronx and Fleses.
And so it's amazing.
Like it's very Caribbean.
It's very like, it has a lot of flavor, right?
Sounds amazing for sure.
Yeah.
Like you can't get to Tatiana for months.
It's so full.
It's like the most trendy restaurant in New York right now.
But the whole thing it has is because it's a very unique menu because he's telling his
own story.
The restaurant is actually named after the chef's sister because he said like, Oh, my
sister, she, like my, he tells his mom was she had a catering business.
And so like she was always working.
So his sister basically was the one who would take care of him and she was the one who taught
him how to cook.
So he says this restaurant is also like a gift for my sister and it's the story of the
food that we grew up eating.
And that's why the menu is so particular, right?
Yeah.
I think like through this whole conversation, I think the storytelling and stories is a
concept that comes back and back again.
Yeah.
And for sure, I think like, um, I had an experience in a restaurant.
This was actually in Mugaritz in 2017.
So Mugaritz is known for being intellectually challenging.
But this dish for me, um, so this is the experience I had.
They bring us the dish and it was like a lobster tweezer and a broth, right?
And I think it was actually only the lobster tweezer.
So when I was about to eat it, you had to take it with your hand and I had one bite
and the thing was frozen.
So it felt like, I don't know, like, like you come completely drunk at home and 3am
and you take a frozen piece of fish and you don't care and you eat it anyway, something
like that.
So you had to let it melt in your mouth and it was awkward.
You know, it was like not cool.
It sounds awkward.
I mean, it's an experience for sure.
It was like, you have to force yourself to enjoy it.
And I was like, why would you do that?
You know, like with a nice piece of lobster, you know?
And then the next day I was talking with a guy who was like a Mugaritz freak.
He had been there like 10 times a year and he told me like, did it do it like that?
Because when I went there, it was with a hot, with a warm broth and then you would have
like the combination of the broth and there was like an explanation.
I don't remember the whole explanation to it.
And I was like, the dish lost so much without the right context, explanation, the story
and a lot of things.
Yeah.
I think their book, Mugaritz books, his name is the flavor of stories or something like
that.
Oh, that's so nice.
Ironically, they have a book with that name.
But then they forgot to tell you the story.
Yeah, but that's the experience I had.
Yeah.
That's the whole thing, right?
Because then like if you force things to watch, it's very hard to enjoy them.
Like experiences have, I feel like they have to be very, you have to help people enjoy
things, right?
Like if you make it too challenging, then it's not really enjoyable.
Yeah.
I think that's also, it's also a principle in design.
You know, like when we talk, there's this book of Norman something, it's called the
design of everyday things.
Yeah.
Foster, right?
Norman Foster, right?
Yeah, Norman Foster.
Yeah.
And you know, like the whole principle that you get from this is that things have to be
self-explanatory.
Exactly.
Right.
For them to work and they have to be part of like a whole conceptual system and the
user and the thing, the product, the design product have to interact and understand each
other, which is not at all what happened in this case I just mentioned, you know?
Exactly.
And when you do things that are so challenging, it's like, okay, yeah, it's an experience.
Like you'll go once, you know, to like live through it and know what it's like, but you
won't go back.
Why would you go back?
You didn't really enjoy it.
I haven't been back since then.
This was like six years ago.
Right.
Why would you?
You had an uncomfortable experience.
Like, yeah, it was a story, but did you really enjoy yourself?
Exactly.
Like, not for the money I paid.
And two days later I ate for free at Central and I enjoyed that much more, you know?
I mean, of course it was for free.
So yeah, that was better.
Yeah.
That was always an extra, that always makes the story better, you know?
Yeah.
But that's the whole thing, right?
Like food, food is so close to like our most basic animal instincts.
Like food is a very hedonistic experience.
It's all about enjoying sensations.
It's about enjoying your body.
It's a very sensual experience, not in like a sexy way, but like a sensory way.
Yeah.
And the whole thing is about enjoying yourself.
Food like brings us back to our memories.
Like it's something that gets very ingrained in your memory when you actually do it well.
So when you create an experience that just makes people feel good, just that it's just
supposed to make you feel good.
That's a little thing.
So food that manages that, that's the, that's successful, right?
The whole story with a challenging thing, that's not a bit restaurants, that's like
a theme park.
You just mentioned the word sensory and the place where I work, I work closely with sensory
analysis scientists.
That's so cool.
And I've learned so much in the last years.
There's this book from an Oxford researcher called Charles Spence and his book is called
Gastro Physics.
I love that.
And this is like the vulgatory science to understand principles of sensory analysis
actually.
And the way I would wrap it up is a flavor is pretty much as much produced by the brain
as it is by the tongue and your senses.
Yeah.
And there are very clear proofs of this, like putting the same piece of food in two different
dishwares will generate two different flavors.
It really does.
And like the sound you're hearing, the type of music you have, if the music is too loud,
then like your senses are very focused on the music instead on the food.
No, he made like a lot of experiments with this.
Like imagine you're drinking a wine, right?
And now you're hearing only buzz sounds like boom.
And now you're hearing only super high pitch sound like, like with one or the other, like
usually people say that with buzz sounds you will feel like more body to the wine.
Yeah.
And where high pitch more sour notes, you know, but this is absolutely psychological.
The wine is the same.
There's this whole thing with synesthesia there, right?
Like how senses get mixed up and for sure, for sure.
Like high pitch sounds are for sure acidic.
Like there's no.
Yeah, exactly.
There is another experiment called, I think it's Kiki Boo Boo.
I love the Kiki Boo Boo experiment.
I talk about it all the time.
I think it's so cool because it's so obvious, right?
Like, honestly, honestly, Boo Boo is right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Could you explain it to the audience?
I know this experiment was, uh, was done by a neuro neuroscientist and what he did was
then he cut out two shapes, right?
One shape was sort of out shape, very round like that.
And the other was pointy.
Uh, and he went to people and he went, okay, there are two sounds, Boo Boo and Kiki.
Which sounds do you relate to which shape?
And almost 100% of the people said that Boo Boo was the round cloud shaped one and Kiki
was the pointed one.
And like, obviously, right?
Obviously.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's not obvious, but it is.
Yeah.
If you like think about it, it's obvious, but everyone said it because that's just how
it feels.
And that's the thing.
That's where you realize that senses are connected and the way help them interact like helps
elevate or degrade them.
Yeah.
And I think the experiment that was, you know, super straightforward and this is something
done in supermarkets.
It's very, very easy.
Like you put French music, people buy French wine.
You put Italian music, people buy Italian wine.
You know, it worked like that.
Yeah, we have a connection.
Like in the wine section and they just proved to work, you know, like millions of times.
I know that I didn't know about that experiment.
I, I'm going to look it up.
I like that.
That's the whole thing.
Like we don't realize that's what I always, I'll get in fights with restaurant managers
or something because they want to have like the music super loud and be like, music is
super loud.
People won't really enjoy your food is because they won't be able to taste it.
And we'll let know, but we have to set the ambience.
It's like, yeah, but if you could cat talk, they can't listen to each other.
Like very loud music is good for a party, but not for enjoying a good meal.
Yeah, exactly.
And also the, the, the, the type of music, if it's too fast, it also doesn't work.
Yeah.
Or, or, uh, uh, people from, from the service stuff, having a super strong perfume.
Yeah.
That's also annoying.
You know, like what you're eating is like, well, what's going on?
You know, like, yeah, well the real, you have to like be aware of every single sense, not
just the plate of the dish.
Absolutely.
That's the reason people go to restaurants.
That's the reason when I love, when people say like, Oh, and I found this way to replicate
this dish from Mugaritz and I had it at home without delivery services.
And I said, you're not understanding anything.
Exactly.
So before we, we finished, I wanted to ask you about the region you're living right now.
You're in the middle of Yucatan, which is like, you mentioned is kind of trendy right
now with its food scene.
It is.
Yeah.
What can you tell about that?
Not only about the contemporary food scene, but also about the traditional Mexican food,
which has to be amazing, I guess.
It's amazing.
I want to give a little bit of context about Yucatan.
Like I'm very passionate about this place.
Right now where I'm living media, it's like at the top of the Yucatan peninsula.
This is where the, the meteor that killed the dinosaurs crashed inside the crater from
the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
That's amazing.
It's so cool.
Like I'm very obsessed with dinosaurs, right?
So when I realized that I was moving to this place, it's like, Oh my God.
So there's a lot of like history to this place, like variation history.
This is then where the Mayan culture had a lot of a scene, right?
So this is where you find Chichen Itza, Uxmad.
It's so full of Mayan ruins.
Mayan culture is very alive here still.
People talk about Mayan culture disappearing.
It didn't disappear at all.
People still speak Mayan here.
Mayan food is still available, right?
And Mayan food is very unique.
People talk about Mexican food and the lesson you get like, Oh, you're eating so much, so
many tacos for sure.
I'm like, no, no, Mayan food isn't many tacos.
It's very different.
Mayan food is so good.
So good.
Like most food here, it's a lot of pork because they would have javelis.
How do you say javelis in English?
Boar.
Yeah, boar.
And they have this tiny, these tiny pigs that are from this area.
They also eat a lot of deer and ceviche, a lot of ceviche.
That's crazy.
Yeah, it's so good.
Yeah.
Like I wouldn't relate that kind of food like from Yucatan.
I know, right?
People don't think like that's traditional Mexican food, but Yucatan food is very much
like this.
And traditional Mayan food, a lot of it is cooked by burying it, right?
They call it pibil.
Yeah.
That I've seen a lot.
Yeah.
Like these burried ovens.
Exactly.
Like the traditional, like famous Yucatan dish is cochinita pibil, which is a pork dish.
And so they bury the pork with bitter orange, which is from the region, a lot of like different
leaves and aromatics and like red onion.
And they'll leave it buried for hours and hours.
Like it's got to be buried for at least eight hours.
And then when they take it out, it's filled with its juices and it's so tasty.
Like it's a very complex taste because it's sweet, but it's savory, but it's got a touch
of bitter.
And then people will eat that with their tortilla, right?
It's a nice taquito and it's so tasty, but it's such a unique flavor.
And then this, it's also mixed with newer cuisine that has been developing.
So Yucatan around the 17th, 18th century was a very rich place because of the Inequén
here, because of the Inequén, they started making ropes, right?
So this is where ropes for most boats were developed.
What is exactly Inequén?
Like a plant?
Yeah, Inequén is like an agave plant.
And so from this path, they make boat ropes from 17th, 19th century were made from the
Inequén plant.
So this place was the place for millionaires.
So a lot of French people moved here, a lot of people from, a lot of people from many
places.
So the cuisines and the love people from Lebanon also started coming during the migration from
Lebanon to America.
So because of this, all the migration then came here, food started evolving, right?
So another of the traditional dishes that evolved is the quesadillas, the round cheese
from the Netherlands.
They empty it out and they fill it with pork and then they cover it with turkey sauce.
Turkey is something that they also eat a lot of here.
It's called quesadilla.
It's so good.
You have to fall asleep after eating it, right?
Because it's so heavy, but it's amazing.
But it's basically a Gouda cheese filled with pork.
That's what it is.
Yeah.
Covered with turkey sauce, with turkey gravy.
And then they also have, and they think like, they call it quesadillas.
They call it like cheese from the Netherlands, but they say that it's from here.
And it's like, but in the name you have the other country.
You know that there is like a taco variation here in the Basque country.
It's called Talos.
Okay.
It's not tortillas.
It's like, well, there are tortillas, but it's different.
They're thicker, but it's also with a nixtamalized corn and the whole thing.
And of course you will ask Basque people and they say that's Basque for sure.
Super Basque.
I love that.
Cause it becomes part of the day to day food, right?
Like this stuffed cheese is a traditional.
Yeah.
Well, this is like a celebration thing.
This is eaten once a year in Santo Domas, I think.
Okay.
And like that it's become so special.
Like it's become ritualized.
That's very nice.
Now here, like the stuffed cheese, just they like it's a very traditional food, like you
might have it on the weekend with your graph.
And then they also like, they have the kiwis and the kiwis are like, like Lebanese kiw,
right?
You know, the meatballs, the fried meatballs.
They just, they just assumed it as part of their like traditional food.
You'll be like, oh, what's traditional Yucatecan food?
And they'll be like, kiwi?
That's so ridiculous.
And my favorite thing, like my favorite Yucatecan meal, it's this thing.
It's just sort of like a hummus, but it's green tomato, like tree tomato, green tomato
with pumpkin seeds.
And it's all mashed together.
I had that, my friend's Ensenada, there's a restaurant called Ensenada in Brooklyn.
And I had exactly that.
That was amazing.
It's so good.
It's called Siquil Pac.
Like a salsa, right?
Yeah.
Sort of like a dipping sauce.
It's called Siquil Pac.
And I know that's a traditional Mayan meal too.
And it's so good.
That's like my favorite thing here.
Yeah, he makes like a degustation of, I don't know, eight different types of tortillas and
also like 12 different dips.
And that's one like a starter he sends in his restaurant.
Super nice.
That's one of the best food inventions in Mexico, Siquil Pac.
It's so good.
And it's such a unique flavor, right?
Like I've never tasted anything that tastes like that, but it's amazing.
Every time I try it, it just goes, I need more of this.
It's very good.
And again, it's so different from everything else that you have in Mexico.
There was like a hurricane in Yucatan relatively recently or some kind of...
That hurricane's all the time.
Because I remember I had this idea of, I made this amazing habanero sauce with anchovies
and I was flirting with the idea of skating it up.
And so I had to go to the source of habanero, which is Yucatan.
So I actually had brought some emails with some habanero producers and they were all
like, no, all our crops are destroyed because of the hurricane.
So like two years ago, something like that.
It was I think three years ago.
It's like during the beginning of the whole epidemic, there was a strong hurricane pass
through.
And there are hurricanes all the time.
This is a very hurricane region.
Actually, the name Hurricane Huracán comes from a Mayan god.
No way.
Yeah.
I thought you were going to say it comes from Yucatan and I was like, no way.
It does.
It's a Mayan god.
It's one of the creator gods from Mayan culture.
Like there are three creator gods and one of them is Huracán.
And that's where the word comes from because there are so many hurricanes here all the
time.
Yucatan, of course.
This is a place of aerogenetic.
So much things have begun here.
I love it so much.
I get very excited about that.
It's a crater.
I'm so excited about living in the crater.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.
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