Soul Food with Chef Hugo Ahumada

You wouldn’t be to blame if you walked into Puerto Vallarta restaurant Maia and thought you were in an art gallery that served food. The paintings on the walls are stunning and penetrating: a man with a tipped sombrero blocking his face strums his guittarra while a woman lies back, neck exposed, and eyes closed; a ladder painted on the ceiling leads you out of a recess toward a celestial body in the sky.

All of this was hand picked by chef Hugo Ahumada, previously the head chef of both of the highly acclaimed Cafe des Artistes Puerto Vallarta properties. The chef could have passed off the decorating to a professional but outsourcing passion doesn't come easily to Ahumada. He sourced all the art from friend Tony Collantas, used scrap wood to build the bar, even turned an old door into a table.

When Ahumada talks to you, it isn’t enough for him to be excited; he wants to imbue you with the same emotion. Maia, named after his daughter, is a constant demonstration of his devotion to the soul-nourishing qualities of food.

Growing up in Puerto Vallarta, Ahumada accompanied his grandmother on daily visits to the markets, scouring for fresh, local ingredients. “It was like a game,” Ahumada said. That game stayed with him and he still loves his visits to the market.

“When you see the new apples, the new mangoes… Your passion starts working,” he said. At 16, Ahumada started working for Cafe des Artistes as an apprentice, cleaning the refrigerator and washing vegetables. As the only other employee with a visa, Ahumada got to travel with the chef for trainings in Chicago, Santiago, and London. He began to win prizes and notoriety.

After 17 years at Cafe des Artistes, five of them as head chef for both restaurants, Ahumada was invited to represent Mexico at the 2013 Bocuse D’Or (also known as the World Cooking Contest). Ahumada wanted to prepare traditional Mexican dishes, but was pressured by Cafe des Artistes to offer up something else. That was the end of his time with Cafe des Artistes and the beginning of a wandering depression.

Not sure what to do next, Ahumada took a ten-day excursion with los Huicholes, the indigenous people of San Luis de Potosí and neighboring areas. The journey began with a ceremony where the Huicholes cut the ear of a sacred cow as a blessing. “Ofrenda,” Ahumada explained. “You give something before you take it.” For 10 days, Ahumada and his companions had no salt, no sugar, no meat, only vegetables and grains. At the end of the trek, they ate the cow that had been part of the ofrenda.

Next, Ahumada opens Maia… [pagebreak]

On the trip, Ahumada began to see food as part of a divine and communal experience. “We need to feed our souls, not just our egos," Ahumada said. "What you’re eating, that’s your energy.” He also embraced blessing food as a part of eating. “Take 30 seconds to be thankful for what you’re eating; bless it; think about what you’re eating," he said. From his experience, he became confident that leaving Cafe des Artistes was the right move. The next step was making his own sanctuary for food.

Ahumada labels his style as “cocina con intencion." In contrast to chains you might find on the malecon, Ahumada’s menu is a testament to local flavors. “In Puerto Vallarta, you find salmon in all the restaurants, it’s crazy," Ahumada said. "It has to be frozen. I cook with the fresh fishes: mahi mahi, red snapper, [Mexican (or Pacific)] sierra, and tuna.” Ahumada is more confounded than angry at the lack of local ingredients in other restaurants.

“They keep buying Italian cheese from Costco," he said. "I don’t get it. We buy products from the local people.“ Torito is a flat local fish that Ahumada says a lot of chefs don’t touch because they don’t know how to prepare it. “This is what the oceans give us. We have to learn how to cook it!”

The chef smokes torito with cinnamon and uses it in salads. Ahumada had an inkling that if he aged panela, a local cheese, it would take a unique form; so he kept the panela in the refrigerator for a month and a half. With the texture of Camembert, Ahumada’s aged panela is a great complement to raicilla, the local agave spirit.

Everyone has heard of tequila, some know mezcal, but raicilla isn’t even close to a household name. Raicilla is considered the moonshine of Jalisco, the state in which Puerto Vallarta is located. Its prohibition-style reputation isn’t hyperbole: companies have only recently been legally producing the spirit. Despite the lagging awareness, Ahumada thinks raicilla deserves the notoriety of its more famous agave-made brethren.

“Don’t bring mezcal from Oaxaca if you’re in Puerto Vallarta," Ahumada said. "Drink what’s from here.” Ahumada hopes that raicilla will eventually get its own origin designation, like its more famous brother. “If it isn’t made in Tequila, they can’t call it tequila,” he said. Similarly, Ahumada hopes that someday Jaliscans will take pride in knowing that all raicilla comes from their state.

With such a culinary and spiritual mind therein, some might have a desire to take a pilgrimage to Maia, but Ahumada would be the first to tell you that anyone can have a meaningful food experience in their own kitchen. Ahumada’s core recommendation is to buy fresh and organic: “Now all the chemicals that we have in food, we don’t want to know what is there.” For Ahumada, a fulfilling life through food comes from a simple recipe: “Made with love from the market; everyone can do it.”