I arrived in Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo two Tuesdays ago, wearing sandals for the first time in my adult life, looking for all intents and purposes like the standard-issue beach bum tourist. I was not, however, here for relaxation alone, armed with a healthy list of eating goals culled from hours of internet research, determined to gain at least some familiarity with the basics of Yucatan cooking. This project was mostly successful, despite the sweltering heat, weak tropical cocktails and hordes of daytrippers clad in hot pink ‘I’m In Cancun/Cozumel/Playa del Carmen, Bitch’ tanktops; even in the island’s northern resort district, the dining opportunities are bountiful, cheap and varied enough that it was easy to stumble through a ramshackle introductory primer, hiding from the seemingly constant sun in a series of loncherias, coctelerias and cocinas economicas. This former fishing village and current sometimes tourist mecca maintains a dual identity - as overtly commercialized as much of the Mayan Riviera but retaining a heavy base of family-run restaurants cooking in traditional style - and remains a place where it’s difficult to have a bad meal, excepting the usual, very obvious tourist traps located along the two main drags. Yet even the overpriced (for Mexico at least) waterfront seafood shacks, each emphasizing their laid-back vibe with beach-sand floors, plastic patio furniture and amazingly leisurely service, are still generally solid, mostly thanks to the bounty of freshly caught fish still spilling into the island daily. The combination of these showy places with humbler options on the side-streets and mid-island colonias, made for a dazzling crash course in regional eating, which I’ll attempt to document across the next few posts. on Of the roughly 20 meals I managed to wolf down here, one in particular stood out, the sole spot aiming for the sort of classy, white tablecloth style you might associate with a culinary-school pedigree. This was Jardin Maya, maybe the best and certainly the most delicate dining experience of the trip, a restaurant whose modish approach was counterbalanced by a concerted focus on pre-Spanish Mayan preparation, dedicated to delicious old corners of regional cuisine not touched in most of the island’s other eateries. Here we enjoyed polkanes, white bean and pepita stuffed logs of fried masa that resembled a more sophisticated, rib-sticking eggroll. Pulled from the small pumpkins native to the area, pepitas play a big role in pre-Columbian cooking (the basis for the classic proto-salsa Sikil P’ak) and also the saucy heart of papadzules, a dish of hard-boiled egg slices wrapped in tortillas, dipped previously in a pale green pumpkin-seed sauce. Papadzules are the supposed precursor to the enchilada, although this theory may be apocryphal, considering the Mayan’s fondness for thick, ash-cooked tortillas, which would have been difficult to fold and fill. I was initially afraid to order this seemingly simple item, imagining it would compare pallidly to more robust modern enchiladas, but the ones served at Jardin Maya were exceptional, a quality hopefully captured by this recipe from Mexican cooking school proprietor and Yucatan expert David Sterling. Stranger, and perhaps a bit more of an acquired taste, was the pan de cazon, a flapjack-style stack of tortillas filled with a mixture of shredded fish and black beans, topped with the sweet salsa roja I encountered many times on the island. Described by Diana Kennedy as salsa jitomate yucateca, including the region’s intense green habanero but mercifully omitting most of its heat, it’s a reminder that the story of the tomato as food object / sauce base begins here; the word comes from the Nahuatl (Aztec) tomatl, literally ‘the swelling fruit.’ A more recent addition to the local pantry is the Dutch Edam cheese topping the pan de cazul. Another fixture of the area (used in queso relleno, in which an Edam ball is scraped out, its wax husk filled back with cheese mixed with ground meat and spices and oven baked into a custard) this foreign cheese supposedly gained entry to the peninsula via the nearby port/Yucatan capital of Mérida. Cazon refers to dogfish, although apparently in many cases the meat of more vulnerable baby sharks is used, part of an ongoing pattern of major poaching in the Gulf of Mexico, which continues despite the nation’s recent ban on shark and stingray fishing. The fish in Jardin Maya's version appeared to have been salted, a method of preservation which I hope, combined with the marked focus on traditional preparation, points to a more humane presentation. I did notice, in the days following, some handwritten signs for 'empanadas de raya' and 'empanadas de cazon' as specials on a few food stands, but decided to abstain. There were enough other things to eat without possibly chowing down on endangered species.
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