by Ricky Toledano

I had told myself I would never write a restaurant review. Some of my closest friends have never understood why I wouldn’t wed my writing with my pursuit of gastronomy.  Only in Oaxaca would I finally break the rule I had always kept for two reasons.

The first is because I’ve never been apt for such writing. I tried once, but it wandered into novel that started with a food fight between ex-lovers. The second reason is one I have never revealed because it is related to an intimate issue of ethics, which I believe is always inappropriate and tardy for the dinner table.  The sermon that I have never given follows that I cannot use my words or actions to encourage people to consume (more) animals. Although I am not vegan, it should come as no surprise that I shall almost review a vegan restaurant – almost, because it was a place where my thoughts also wandered, but into another kind of food fight.

As I sat at the wooden table in the stone courtyard of the rustically elegant Hierba Dulce, the restaurant in an old colonial home of the historic district of Oaxaca, replete with tiled fountain, I saw how the old house sprawled into directions as charming and varied as its menu. I was delighted to have so much to choose from, because I usually sift quickly through the menu items to pick out the few things I can eat. With so many choices before me, I decided to celebrate, slowing down first with a margarita of young espandín mezcal, lime and agave syrup, which arrived with a sprig of rosemary and a slice of dried lime. The cocktail not only opened my appetite but my memory as well. 

I tried to remember how long ago it was that I adopted the Vedic ethic of vegetarianism, whereby if one wants a certain exemption from the cycle of life – in which no life can exist without destroying others – such a life will require the help of animals. Therefore, being both predator and prey by consuming both the flesh and milk of animals is the basest of betrayals, an infringement of the most important of all rules: treating others as one would like to be treated. Since I want to be devoured by neither microbe nor tiger, I have done my best to respect this ethic ever since, a practice that reverberates, I hope, in my treatment of people.

The vegan ethic, however, is certainly sounder, because the production of milk cannot be done without the production of flesh and all the cruelty that ensues. Veganism is a much broader reading than the choice between eating lives that run to protect themselves from us and those that don’t. By the same logic, nonetheless, I cannot help but question whether vegans should keep pets or take medications. Certainly, they should not drink cocktails with alcohol that contains gusanos or eat chili pepper pounded with roasted champulines. Nor should they buy the bright carpets of Oaxaca, dyed with the traditional cochinilla colors.  Those last three examples mean that even insects are consumed in Mexico, a place where civilizations ancient and contemporary have encountered deserts, ocean, mountains, and tropical forests in such proximity they produce what I believe to be the most diverse diet in the world.

I thought about how hard the discipline of veganism must be in a world of destruction, but I also wondered how related it is to the most basic of human fears: Death.  That might make Mexico even more challenging for worshipers of life since the culture has a unique friendship with Death. Nowhere have I found this kinship more vibrant than in Oaxaca, where Death has been invited and celebrated since time immemorial.

Afterall, how can one love Life without loving Death? I thought.

As I pursued the menu – so curious as to what the traditional, rich mole sauces of cacao, nuts, seeds and chili peppers would accompany if not meats – I smiled when thinking about how extremes always encounter themselves in the end, because it may follow that my Mexican ancestors’ reverence for life was so great that they even sacrificed each other. They played sports in which the winners had the glory of death. And although there are some historical controversies, there are indications that they may have been occasions in which they even consumed each other.

If ethics were merely a question of what one consumes and does not consume, however, Gandhi would never have needed to say that some of the most violent people he had encountered were vegetarians. That is why I have chosen to live by giving an example and not sermons, although I admire those who have advocated on behalf of animal rights. I have never had such courage to do so because animal cruelty troubles me too much. I am thankful that their work has sprouted in lands where animals are consumed daily, even though it has never been difficult to be vegetarian in Mexico for two reasons.

First, I have not always been vegetarian, and I remember exactly how the traditional food is prepared and how it tastes, so I can circumnavigate the use of lard and chicken stock. Second, many of the traditional dishes have always been offered with cheese, egg, avocado, beans, mushrooms and huitlacoches, or cactus. Just the variety and taste of those foods raised in the volcanic soils astound me every year as I go back to visit my family in Puebla – known as the culinary capital of Mexico, although Oaxaca has been fighting hard to debunk it. Naturally, I am biased, so with my heart in my hand, I say I found Oaxacan mole negro better than the renowned mole poblano. Yet, what Oaxaca has in variety and quality of their moles, Puebla has in massa – all that is made of the traditional flours both sweet and savory.

In Mexican tradition, two salsas, one green and one red, were artfully placed before me on the table just after my cocktail arrived, but they were served with hand-made, toasted blue corn totopos. Although healthier toasted, I would have preferred them fried, which seals in their flavor better. Hierba Dulce, however, is a slow food project dedicated to the deindustrialization of food, meaning that it excludes the use of oil, sugar, and other chemicals. Their food is sourced locally, close to the origin and all the knowledge that comes with their food.    

When choosing food, I consider health after cruelty, which means that taste and art are rendered into tertiary positions. The priorities of a gastronome are therefore inverse to mine, which may be another reason why I do not review restaurants. Fried foods, however, are a weakness of mine, inconsistent with the rituals of a man who has a morning drink of seeds and greens. Although I never been one for fried totopos as an appetizer before meals (because they are too filling!), the more Mexican botana I cannot resist is potato or banana chips with salsas. That basket of fried corn chips in the Mexican restaurants of this world is something I have never seen in Mexico. As far as I remember, leftover tortillas have always been used for chilaquiles and soups, or – as my father had told me from the memory of his village life – they were charred black into the powder to clean one’s teeth.  That said, the three little toasted totopos placed before me with the delicious salsas were a poem, connecting me to ancient traditions of nourishment and the knowledge of the Earth.

Health was also why I chose what might be the most uninteresting of the starter items on the menu, a salad of nopales (cactus), heirloom tomatoes, onions and herbs. Since I had already decided I would eat a luxuriantly cooked mole over massa, I thought it would be better to have some raw food that was lighter.

The handmade tortillas dipped in red mole made with Oaxaca’s native chilhaucle chili pepper was one of the most delicious moles I had ever tasted, and there was nothing heavy about the dish whatsoever.  I regretted not having ordered a more substantial starter, like the red bean soup with almond cheese, pumpkin flowers and avocado, or their squash stuffed with a picadillo of oyster mushrooms on a seed soil and olive cream.

I had room for one more dish and contemplated trying the green mole of miltomate and fresh herbs, served with white beans and chayotes. But I decided to have dessert, although I usually skip the course because I am not one for sweets. Vegan desserts, however, never fail to impress me as they are often better than the ones they mimic; although they are often much, much heavier. I couldn’t resist xocoatl in the land that gave the world chocolate – or should I say dxuladi in the native Zapotec language of Oaxaca. Pounded in the traditional way with cacao, almonds and cinnamon, the chocolate at Hiebra Dulce was of the highest quality. Topped with a pineapple compote, the cake was exquisite, but – just as I had feared – it was the heaviest of the courses, a bad choice, overkill after mole. I would like to suggest to Hierba Dulce and all the restaurants of the world to please return to the old, disappeared tradition of serving the season’s best fruit, the way old restaurants in Rio de Janeiro used to offer custard apples at the height of summer. Or, I will never forget the orange juice, sweet as honey, served in a small champagne flute in Barcelona, because nothing ever since has matched the way that most simple dessert, in a year with the most incredible crop, had cut the fat and salt of a meal. In the beautiful patio courtyard of Hierba Dulce, nothing would have been more in line with the deindustrialized, slow-food project than to serve, say, a prickly pear, sliced elegantly onto one of their clay dishes.

We all make bad choices, I thought with a smirk, feeling too full after the chocolate. Alas, the world would be an easy place if choices were only between right and wrong. Unfortunately, as humans we must often choose between two rights and two wrongs, which are difficult calculations to make even for the wisest when our tastes get in the way. That is why I sympathize with all those trying to navigate the menus in their lives. In fact, despite my vegetarianism, I have found myself on tropical islands where I consider there to be less hiṃsā (harm) eating the fish by local fishermen supporting their families than to insist on a marguerita pizza. In India, where, say, the omnipresent nanking snacks are packaged with the green stamp for vegetarian, I was horrified to discover that that does not mean they come without violence. For the rest of my life, I think I will be haunted by that video of the infuriated mother orangutang, desperately trying to defend her children and forest in flames in Indonesia, where the production palm oil is destroying the environment and our health around the globe as we gorge ourselves on processed foods. Since such visions are insupportable, I understand why some completely ignore the origin and cost of all they consume: it hurts. And it hurts because doing so requires one to contemplate Death, inviting It inside, spending some time with our greatest fear.

I know it is uncomfortable, but I encourage everyone, everywhere, to contemplate Death, because even the slightest contact with Death will make you think about life and all that must be sacrificed in order to live and to get what you want. For what? You’ll ask, questioning those desires, along with many others about the mission of your life. I know that it might be a lot to ask of someone who has relished tacos de carne asada all their life to be vegetarian from one day to the next. A food fight would ensue, one I do not wish to have with some of the people most loved by me. Therefore, I don’t ask that anyone stop eating meat or cheese; I ask that they invite Death in for a glass of mezcal and talk to Him a while about the cost on not doing so. While it may be that they decide to change nothing in their diet and all that they consume, I am certain that the encounter with Death will make them more conscious about what they select for themselves and the creatures with whom they share this life.

Of course, if you simply cannot deal with Death, you can start by celebrating the Day of the Dead, together with all of Mexico every November 2^nd, when every Mexican remembers all who have left them and where they are going with such colors, with such music, with such love.

I had an unforgettable meal at Hierba Dulce, a place I will most certainly visit again. Go there with all the time in the world to try things you’ve never had. You might leave like I did, satiated under a sky spotted with clouds after what had been a week of dry heat. It made me hope how the rain would fall, watering the lands that produced the incredible food of Oaxaca, a place I had known would certainly be a culinary experience, but I had never imagined it would be the place I would be inspired to write a restaurant review, much less one in which I would finally express the food fight inside of me.  

HIERBA DULCE

C. Porfirio Díaz 311, RUTA INDEPENDENCIA,

Centro, 68000 Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, Mexico

https://www.hierba-dulce.com/english/menu/