Apapaxoa 2026: What Lies Behind Every Dish

A dish never tells just one story.

Behind a preparation, there may be a community, a producer, a tradition, a landscape, a technique passed down through generations, or a decision about the future of the resources that make gastronomy possible.

We reached the final day of Apapaxoa Festival GastroCultural Xcaret 2026, where a series of conversations looked beyond the table to explore everything that happens before an ingredient becomes an experience. Communication, beverages, climate change, social responsibility, culture, and tradition emerged as different ways of approaching the same question: what does it really mean to create gastronomy today?

An Industry Also Built Through Connection

For Gökmen Sözen, founder of Gastromasa and CEO of Sözen Group, contemporary gastronomy can no longer be understood solely through restaurants.

His own career reflects this transformation. After beginning in hospitality and food photography, Sözen found in communication a way to connect the people who shape the industry. In 2015, he created Gastromasa with the aim of bringing chefs, producers, academics, investors, and media together around the same conversation.

Over time, the project expanded from Istanbul to cities such as London and Dubai, becoming a space for exchange between different gastronomic cultures.

During his Apapaxoa conference, Sözen spoke precisely about this evolution. Technology, travel, communication networks, and changing consumer habits have transformed the way we discover and experience food.

Gastronomy is no longer a world contained within a kitchen.

Today, it is also a way of communicating identity, creating encounters, and building bridges between countries and generations.

A Cup of Coffee Can Tell a Story, Too

For Julián Martínez Morales, his relationship with coffee began long before it became a profession.

At the age of 12, his father taught him how to roast coffee. From there, his path led him toward extraction methods, sensory analysis, education, and the promotion of Mexican coffee culture.

Author of *Café, arte y cultura*, Martínez has dedicated much of his career to explaining what happens behind a cup: cultivation, processing, roasting, and the different ways coffee can be prepared.

At Apapaxoa, the conversation also moved into the world of mocktails and alcohol-free beverages.

One of the central ideas of his presentation was that every ingredient matters in a mocktail. It is not simply about removing alcohol from a preparation, but about building a drink through its aromas, textures, colors, and flavors.

New technologies applied to cuisine and mixology open an even wider field of possibilities.

A beverage can then become more than an accompaniment: a way of creating a moment around the table.

Innovating Without Leaving the Territory Behind

In “Transforming Without Losing the Flavor,” Alejo Fiszbajn, Regional Director of Digital Strategy for Forbes LATAM, turned the conversation toward the relationship between innovation, territory, and communication.

One of the ideas explored during the presentation captures this perspective: “Real innovation does not break away from the territory. It makes it greater.”

The phrase invites us to consider innovation from another perspective. Not necessarily as a break with what came before, but as a way of expanding what already exists and bringing it to new audiences.

In a context where gastronomy is also discovered through digital platforms and media, telling a story well carries a particular responsibility.

It is not simply about capturing attention. It also matters what information reaches the audience, how that narrative is shaped, and how closely what is communicated reflects the reality behind it.

Because transforming the way a story reaches people can also transform the way they understand a territory.

Water, Heat, and a Future Already Taking Shape

Climate has ceased to be a conversation exclusively about the environment. It has become a gastronomic conversation as well.

In “Water, Heat, and Survival,” Sandra Fernández and Carlos Borboa explored the challenges climate change poses to the production of food and beverages.

Drought, rising temperatures, and shifting weather patterns have direct consequences for productive territories. In the world of wine, for example, climatic conditions can alter growing cycles, production timelines, and the characteristics of grapes.

Adaptation is already part of the conversation. But adapting requires us to observe first.

Understanding how soils change, how water behaves, and what conditions each crop requires makes it possible to develop strategies that respond not only to an immediate emergency, but to a different future.

Mexico is also home to a remarkable diversity of soils and ecosystems that form an essential part of its productive heritage.

To speak about gastronomy, then, is also to speak about what makes it possible. Without water, soil, and biodiversity, the table we know would not exist.

When Cooking Also Means Taking a Stand

Harry Sasson raised one of Apapaxoa’s most direct questions: what responsibility does a chef have toward the territory and the people who produce their ingredients?

For the Colombian chef, the answer begins long before the stove.

During his presentation, he shared projects developed with communities in Montes de María, where gastronomy and local production have become tools for creating economic alternatives and strengthening communities affected by conflict.

He also spoke about his work through Corazón Verde and initiatives aimed at training young people from vulnerable communities, expanding their opportunities within the hospitality industry.

One of the most representative examples was fresh palm heart from Putumayo, whose introduction into the market sought to offer a productive alternative for communities historically connected to coca leaf cultivation.

Here, gastronomy becomes a tool capable of connecting markets and territories.

A chef does not simply decide what goes on a plate. To a certain extent, they also decide which stories, products, and communities they help bring into view.

Tea Has a Sense of Place, Too

In “The Tea Club: Master Class,” Victoria Bisogno proposed looking at tea from a different perspective: not as a secondary accompaniment, but as an ingredient and gastronomic experience with enough complexity to take center stage at the table.

A tasting of matcha, hōjicha, and lapsang souchong offered an exploration of very different sensory profiles and demonstrated tea’s possibilities as a pairing element.

Astringency, bitterness, and persistence can interact with the flavors of a dish in ways that differ from wine.

But the experience depends on more than what is inside the cup.

Water temperature, infusion time, tableware, and the ritual of preparation also shape the result.

Bisogno showed that behind an apparently simple cup lies an entire language of origin, technique, and service.

Like wine, tea also has a sense of place, an identity, and a story worth telling.

The Cooks Keeping a Memory Alive

At the “Traditional Cooks of Mexico” roundtable, six women from different regions of the country shared something that cannot be found in a written recipe: the memory of a community.

From Mexico City, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Campeche, and Nayarit, their stories revealed the diversity of Mexican cuisines and the ways knowledge passes from one generation to the next.

Native corn, local ingredients, traditional techniques, and agricultural cycles form part of a much broader system of knowledge than the preparation of a single dish.

Traditional cuisine also speaks to how food is grown, shared, and how a territory is understood.

For many of these cooks, their craft has also become a way to travel, teach, and open new possibilities without leaving their roots behind.

Mexican cuisine, recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage, remains alive not simply because there are recipes we can reproduce.

It remains alive because there are people who continue to cook it, teach it, and adapt it without losing their connection to what gave it origin.

The Closing: A Cuisine That Also Needs Memory

The 2026 Apapaxoa Festival GastroCultural came to a close with a conversation that, in many ways, brought together many of the questions that had shaped the gathering: how do we preserve a cuisine when it is constantly evolving?

In the presentation Mexican Academy of Gastronomy, Gabriel Cárdenas spoke about the work of the Mexican Academy of Gastronomy (AMG) as an organization dedicated to protecting, documenting, and promoting Mexican cuisine both in Mexico and abroad. This work takes on particular relevance when we understand that cuisine is not preserved simply by safeguarding recipes, but by keeping knowledge, techniques, ingredients, and ways of gathering around the table alive.

Part of this work extends beyond Mexico. The AMG certifies Mexican restaurants abroad—currently in 82 countries—through distinctions such as the Sello M* and Sello Copil, created to recognize establishments that uphold the techniques, ingredients, and recipes that give Mexican cuisine its identity.

But preservation does not mean freezing a tradition in time. Mexican cuisine was recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010, precisely as an expression of a living cultural system. In this context, traditional cooks hold a fundamental place: they are living bearers of knowledge passed down through generations, rooted in the territory, local markets, and the social ritual of gathering around the table.

The future of this cuisine, Cárdenas noted, also lies with new generations of chefs who find ways to innovate without becoming detached from their roots. Because a tradition that endures is not necessarily one that repeats the past, but one that knows what must be preserved while finding new ways to express it.

And perhaps that is why this conversation brought Apapaxoa 2026 to a close. After exploring innovation, territory, sustainability, social responsibility, beverages, knowledge, and memory, the final reflection returned to the beginning of it all: a cuisine can only evolve if it knows where it comes from.

Mexican gastronomy is not simply what arrives on the plate. It is the memory of those who cook it, the knowledge of those who grow its ingredients, the markets where they meet, and the tables where that knowledge is shared. To preserve it, then, also means ensuring that it can continue to change without losing its sense of self.

What Remains When Everything Changes

The conversations at Apapaxoa 2026 ultimately led to a common place: gastronomy is never simply what happens inside a kitchen.

It is communication when a story travels from Istanbul to London or from a Mexican territory to the world.

It is knowledge when a cup of coffee reveals the work behind its origin.

It is innovation when a beverage finds new ways of expressing itself.

It is adaptation when climate change forces us to rethink how we produce.

It is responsibility when a chef chooses to work differently with a community.

It is territory when a cup of tea opens a conversation about origin and culture.

And it is memory when a traditional cook prepares a recipe learned from those who came before.

That is why looking closely at a dish also means looking at everything that exists behind it.

Because gastronomy does not end when it reaches the table. That is where its story has only just begun.