Pati visits Mata Ortiz, a village known for its exquisite pottery, and learns its history from local potter Tavo Silveira, who is known worldwide and even made a piece for the pope. Then Pati gets her hands dirty with talented duo Laura Bugarini and Héctor Gallegos, who teach her the basics of Mata Ortiz pottery. Turns out, Tavo can also cook and makes an asado de puerco feast in the town square.
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Pati explores the culture of mysterious Mennonites, a religious community who came to Chihuahua from Germany. Mostly, she’s after what they’re best known for around Mexico, their cheese! She sees their traditional cheese-making process at Pampas Cheese Factory, the holder of the Guinness World Record for largest Mennonite cheese. Then she tries another local culinary innovation, Mennonite pizza.
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In one of Chihuahua’s most remote areas, Guachochi, Pati shares a traditional Rarámuri meal with community leaders Alejandro Hernández and Margarita González, who advocate for land rights, political representation, and cultural preservation. At Kokoyome, a sustainable ranch in the Sinforosa Canyon, she learns about organic farming practices in the region.
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Pati is in the magic town of Maní to learn about something sacred to the Mayans – bees and honey. A cooperative of women who protect the endangered Melipona, a stingless bee native to Yucatán, invites her to join in a Mayan energy cleansing ritual involving buñuelos made with Melipona honey. Then she visits a family living by the traditional “Solar Maya,” meaning they grow everything they eat.
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In Tekit, or “The Capital of the Guayabera,” Pati encounters a tale of sons going against their father’s wishes to follow their own path. Pati meets Eliodoro Xicum, a farmer’s son who went against his father to build a family business making the iconic Guayabera shirts. Then she meets his son, Elio, who chose to become a chef and created a dish that resembles a Guayabera in honor of his father.
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Pati explores the vibrant streets of Yucatán’s capital, Mérida, in search of its flavors. She tries “the best tacos in Mérida” at Wayan’e. The aroma of freshly made cookies lures her to Dondé Fabric, where their globitos and bizcochitos are an important part of Mérida’s mornings. She has sorbet at a shop run by the same family for generations and tastes a unique Yucatecan liqueur at Casa D’Aristi.
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Pati visits Chef Wilson Alonzo in his hometown of Halachó to prepare a traditional Cochinita Pibil in an underground pit. They begin at the local market to source ingredients. Then Pati helps Wilson prepare the achiote marinade, along with his grandmother who taught him traditional cooking and isn’t shy to correct him. The final product is a meal that captures Yucatán’s history in every bite.
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Pati arrives in Motul, a town in the history books for Yucatán’s once thriving henequén industry and for the egg dish Huevos Motuleños. Pati meets Doña Evelia, who put Motul back on the map with her world-famous recipe. She also experiences the legacy of henequén at Hacienda Tamchén and encounters another egg dish in the kitchen, where chef Julio Ku Dominguez makes Abuela’s Buttoned Eggs.
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Temozón is the birthplace of Yucatán’s signature smoked meat Carne Ahumada and everyone in town claims to have a relative who invented it. Pati strolls around town to try different versions of Carne Ahumada. She also returns to Hacienda Tamchén for another traditional dish prepared by chef Julio Ku Dominguez called Huidzi Bii Wai, which means “united tortilla.”
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Pati returns to Mérida to meet sisters, Delfina and Maria Elide, who love to cook and laugh and are famous for recados – pastes of spices and aromatic herbs that season Yucatecan foods. In Uxmal, she learns about ingredients only found in Yucatán that make recados unique, touring citrus, habanero, and chaya fields at an hacienda. Then traditional cook Rosa makes a Relleno Negro using a recado negro.
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Today no trip to Yucatán is complete without seeing a beautiful cenote, natural freshwater pools in caves. But Mayans saw them as the gateway to the underworld. To learn more about Mayan communities, Pati visits Cenote Xocempich with activist and lawyer Zoila Cen, who has dedicated her career to helping Mayan people. The next day, Zoila invites Pati to her niece’s birthday celebration.
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An ingredient Pati constantly uses is salt and Yucatán has one of the most unique salts. The Las Coloradas salt, which means blush red, gets its distinctive color from red algae. Engineer Felipe Perez takes Pati to the pink lakes where the salt is produced. Down the road in Rio Lagartos, conservationist Diego Nuñez takes her to see another pink wonder, Mexico’s highest concentration of flamingos.
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In Yaxunah, Pati discovers Yucatán’s “league of their own.” She joins the Amazonas, a softball team of indigenous women, for their morning practice. As they built a name for themselves, they overcame the mindset that women belong in the kitchen. After teaching Pati the ins and outs of the game, Doña Enedina invites her over for Brazo de Reina, a tamal with hardboiled eggs and ground pepitas.
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Pati travels along the California-Mexico border, one of the world’s busiest crossings, to meet the fronterizos of the golden coast and experience the melding of cultures, cross-border collaborations, and explosive creativity and growth. In San Diego, she discusses multicultural identity with journalist Jean Guerrero and continues the conversation with muralist Michelle Guerrero, a.k.a “MR. B BABY.” Then she joins in a collaboration between San Diego and Tijuana’s gay men’s choruses. She explores culinary innovation in Baja California meeting the “godfather” of Mexican wine, Hugo D’Acosta. In Tijuana, she tastes the original Caesar Salad and gets in the ring with world champion boxer Jackie Nava. In Mexicali, Pati visits Mexico’s largest Chinatown, La Chinesca, where she tours an underground world built by Chinese immigrants and tastes Mexican-infused Chinese cuisine.
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Pati travels along both sides of the Arizona-Sonora border through some of the most wild, untouched places in North America. She starts from where she left off, at the very edge of Baja California in Los Algodones, where perhaps we’ve found the most wild place of all: a town of dentists. Moving across the Sonoran Desert into Arizona and Sonora, she finds herself in a land steeped in legend and tradition. She joins the Tucson Samaritans on one of their hikes to leave water for migrants trekking through the desert. She meets Luis Sotero, a self-taught artist who took up painting while detained at the border and now teaches at a migrant shelter. She explores a ghost town and learns how members of the Tohono O’odham Nation are preserving traditional foods, including the chiltepín – “the mother of all chiles.”
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