4

B

y the time Ben Shewry made

it into the van, he was pretty

sure he was going to puke.

Shewry was in Mexico

for Hokol Vuh, a culinary

journey dreamed up by Roberto Solís, chef

of Mérida’s Néctar, who had planned the

trip as a deep dive into the ingredients and

food culture of the Mayan Yucatán.

Travelling through jungle and villages,

18 renowned chefs – including René

Redzepi, Albert Adrià, Ana Roš and

David Kinch – would try local flavours,

learn about indigenous agriculture and

do some serious bonding in the process.

Then they would team up to cook dinner

for 200 guests beneath the ancient Mayan

ruins of Aké.

It was the kind of adventure that

Shewryloves–achance to learn alongside

friends about the culinary culture of a

country he had never before visited. Until

the penultimate night, it was just that.

The group made tortillas by hand

and planted corn in a milpa, the

Mesoamerican crop-growing system

where a field is planted with several

crops. They swam in the deep waters

of a hidden cenote, learned how an

extraordinary honey called melipona was

harvested and climbed a secret chamber

at Chichén Itzá. Inthe village of Yaxunah,

they ate what Shewry (who once indulged

his love of tacos with an all-taquería

road-trip along the California coast) called

the best cochinita of his life. During a few

relaxing hours in the pool and more than

a little mezcal, they revelled in the kind of

camaraderie that emerges when you get

the rare chance to step out of your daily

life with the few people who understand

implicitly what your daily life entails.

Then Montezuma took his revenge.

It started as a faint queasiness the

night before the final dinner. At first,

Shewry attributed it to stress. Like the

other chefs, he had intended to spend the

day in the kitchen prepping the course

he and Jorge Vallejo, chef of the exquisite

Quintonil in Mexico City, would serve.

But a key ingredient in the coconut dish

• namely the coconuts – hadn’t shown up
  until late. Vallejo hadn’t understood why
  his partner wanted to cream the coconuts
  himself; there was, he gently pointed out,
  fresh cream readily available at the local
  market. But Shewry is nothing if not a
  DIY guy and Vallejo acquiesced to his
  vision, as did the other chefs. When the
  ingredients finally arrived, they jumped
  in to help with the strenuous work of
  cracking and peeling the coconuts.
  It was after midnight when they
  finished. By the time they boarded the
  van for the two-hour journey back to the
  artists’ compound where they were staying,
  Shewry was feeling much worse. He
  slumped woozily in the back seat while the
  others debated what he should do. Blaine
  Wetzel suggested he lie down. Roš tugged
  at his arms in an attempt to get him to
  the front of the bus. Redzepi initiated a
  frantic search for plastic bags that could
  be pressed into service. Finally, sweating

and miserable, Shewry moved to the front

seat, clutching the lone bag that Redzepi’s

efforts had unearthed. “Can we please

just go?” he asked.

About 40 minutes into the drive,

Shewry vomited – prodigiously. He looked

around for a place to dispose of the

overflowing bag, but found none. So he

did the only thing his feverish brain could

come up with: he threw the bag out the

window. Of the moving van. Redzepi and

Rosio Sánchez, seated right behind him,

got the worst of it.

The next morning, Shewry

convalesced in his room while the others

travelled to the site of the dinner. There

they found a field kitchen beneath plastic

tarps that drove the 35-degree temperature

and 95 per cent humidity even higher.

The oysters that Esben Holmboe Bang

had ordered had arrived, but the knives

for shucking them had not. Adrià stuck

his hand into the freezer he would use to

solidify his chocolate ice-cream to find it

barely cool. Christian Puglisi couldn’t

find a bowl to rinse the massive ñame

root he was grating.

Yet everyone adapted. “If the

mountain won’t come to Mohammed,”

Puglisi said as he sawed the top off an

oversized water jug, “Mohammed will

come to the mountain.” Adrià’s

contribution became a cold chocolate

soup. “It would be a delicious ice-cream,”

he said. “If only it were an ice-cream.”

In his partner’s absence, Vallejo

handed out machetes to volunteers and set

Attica’s Ben Shewry faces

Montezuma’s revenge on

a culinary expedition in

the Yucatán.LISA ABEND

recounts the upset, blow by blow.

RUMBLE

JUNGLE

IN THE

90 GOURMET TRAVELLER