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San Miguel de Allende

My Quest for Calm in San Miguel

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By Audrey Jacobs—

Everyone warned me when I moved to San Miguel de Allende, and I didn’t listen. Centro is still a city. Church bells, trucks, street vendors hawking their wares, New York City with the flavor of a small Mexican colonial town. They said I’d eventually crave nature, quiet, a kind of peace only living outside of town can give you.
Life got crazy, and I finally understood the warnings. But I love my duplex in Colonia San Antonio. I didn’t want to “vacation” to relax. So, I went looking for a staycation instead, a week immersed in nature, where someone else would take care of me and force me into self-care.

My life had quietly, then suddenly, turned upside down.
At 55, nine months earlier, I’d moved here alone to fulfill a 30-year dream, with a safety net, a well-paid consulting client I’d had for years. I’d spent my whole life multitasking as a wife, mother, employee, with passion projects as my side hustle: curating TEDx talks, building community, designing events, and matchmaking. I never flew without a net.

Then the net disappeared. My consulting contract ended, my job was eaten by AI. It was time to depend on myself. Terrifying. My body went into fight, flight, or freeze and stayed there. I ate too much, drank too much, didn’t sleep, snapped at my boyfriend, and turned into a whirling dervish.

Inspiration struck and in one insane month I built “Love in San Miguel”, a new social club, from nothing to 400 members and a launch event. It was supposed to fulfill me and sustain me. It did, and it also took a toll.

I needed a reset, a therapeutic escape to restore my nervous system. I made a list of what I wanted: nature, peaceful elegant rooms, a home feel rather than a hotel, places to write, a bio pool, a sauna, hot tub and views.

Most of all, someone whose life’s work was running that place, someone who’d decide exactly what I ate, drank, and did for one week. I wanted to be told how to reset. I’m from California, so I know the Golden Door style reset, where they control your every movement and you switch off. Never been my thing. I wanted a place where I could still think, and where the person running it could teach me a way of living so stress wouldn’t swallow me again once I got home. And I didn’t want it to break the bank. Reasonable yet valuable. It was a demanding list. I’m so demanding about homes and men that I honestly doubted this place existed.

Was I wrong!

Meet Viktor Hackl, owner of Cuna del Cielo. I googled San Miguel de Allende detox retreat, and his place was, literally, the only one that matched my vision. Everything else was a pretty place with massages, yoga, donkeys or simply day spas.

His website’s first line got me: “Cuna del Cielo is a lush four-bedroom oasis on a hilltop above San Miguel de Allende, inviting guests to rest and heal in a space of undisturbed peace and beauty.”

I ached reading it. How soon could I check in?
The property sits a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from the main town square, yet worlds away quietly tucked right against the botanical gardens of the Charco del Ingenio, canyons and waterfalls. Viktor built his sanctuary around that stunning landscape.

It was everything I’d dreamed of. I live in San Miguel and love it, but up here, above it all, something in me unclenched. I didn’t realize how much I needed to see that much open sky.

Viktor’s regimen, food, supplements, exercise, healing modalities, is thorough and deeply researched. Yet he’s not rigid about whether or when you do it.

“Who are you?!?” I asked him. “Austrian”, he said. A more relaxed and casual hybrid of German/Italian/Slavic mentalities. He truly embodied his vision when I saw him grinning over the top of his hand-built wooden sauna box, tanned and peaceful.

Every surface here is made with love. My room, the World Loft, has a private library you reach by a wooden ladder and a round window that frames a single pirul (pink pepper) tree like a painting. I felt like I was in some sort of health time warp. I genuinely didn’t want to leave.

Viktor lives on the property full time and tends to his guests with sincere patience. I’m dating the man who opened San Miguel’s first organic grocery store, someone who takes a generous number of daily supplements, and even he was impressed by Viktor’s knowledge and protocol.

What surprised me most wasn’t any single treatment. It was how much of Viktor’s world quietly rearranged mine, without ever feeling like a lecture.

The days follow an intermittent fasting window. Orthomolecular supplements are dosed with real precision. A therapeutic cycle runs once or twice daily: stretching, wet sauna, gym, cold plunge, infrared sauna again. It never once feels like a chore.

But it’s the small things I know I’ll actually keep. On day two, someone knocked and asked if Viktor’s energy cleanser could come into my room for the weekly clearing. Sage, essential oils, incense, and it was done weekly. I’ve saged a new home before I moved in. I’d never once thought to do it weekly, as maintenance, the way you’d change sheets. I’m taking that home with me.

I also noticed that by day three, my cravings for junk had simply stopped, because the junk wasn’t in the house. Stupid simple concept I’d never applied to my own kitchen. If it’s not there, you don’t eat it. And the eating window, done by six most nights, isn’t a diet rule so much as a kindness to your own sleep. I’ll still go out for dinner sometimes. I’m not becoming a monk. But the logic of it stuck.

The bedrooms are massive and still cozy, and I never felt crowded by the other three rooms. The communal kitchen, dining room, and rooftop hot tub give everyone room to mix or disappear. I loved the outdoor gym more than I’ve ever loved a gym, including an assisted morning headstand with my boyfriend spotting me.

My nervous system had been on overdrive, inhaling stress for three months straight, and I won’t pretend one week erased that. I still snap back into old patterns when triggered. But for most of each day, I was genuinely, physically at peace, in a way my body had been begging for.

Cuna del Cielo also offers oxygen therapy, IV drips, acupuncture, and sound healing, a full menu I didn’t even get on this trip. Reasons enough to go back.

I would have guessed San Miguel had a dozen places doing this. It has exactly one operating at this level, and I’m grateful it does. If you live here, you don’t need a plane ticket for this kind of reset. Cuna del Cielo even offers day passes, a few hours with the saunas, the natural pool, and the jacuzzi, for anyone who just needs an afternoon of it. If you’re visiting, block off the week. I live in San Miguel, and I’m already plaanning when I get to go back.

Audrey Jacobs is the founder and chief matchmaker of Love in San Miguel | Amor en San Miguel. She is a TEDx speaker whose talk has been viewed nearly 200,000 times. Audrey lives in San Miguel de Allende and believes the city is too magical to love alone.

 

San Miguel de Allende

The Hole in the Floorboard

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By Kat Sparks—

I learned to drive on a Volkswagen Thing in Mexico. Part jeep, part car, part truck, ugly as sin, with a hole in the floorboard the size of a dinner plate.

You could look down between your feet and watch Cozumel go by underneath. Gravel, dust, the occasional startled iguana. That hole was my speedometer. If the street was a blur, I was going too fast. If I could count the rocks, I could go faster. Reverse in a Thing is also not where you think it should be, a lesson I would learn again later, at higher stakes and in better shoes.

I was a free-range teenager on that island, back when that was just called being a kid. I had a car, a curfew that was more of a suggestion, and the entire Caribbean as a backyard. What I did not have was privacy. My father, Dean-o, knew I had broken a rule roughly four seconds after I broke it, which I remain convinced defies physics. I would come home rehearsing my story in the driveway, and he would look up from his glass, say my entire name, and the story would evaporate.

I resented it for ten minutes. Then I understood the lesson, which is that the world is small and people talk and you had better be someone you would not mind being reported on. Cozumel gave me independence and street smarts in the same package, which is the only honest way they come.
And it gave me the water.

The first time I dropped into blue water, the real blue, where the reef shelf falls away into a color that has no name in English or Spanish, something in me went quiet and has been looking for that quiet ever since, across too many countries to list. Cenotes, cold quarries, questionable boats captained by men named Chuy. Every dive is an attempt to get back to that first one, and none of them quite do, which is why I keep going.

Dean-o loved Mexico. Not the postcard version, the real one, with the bad roads and the good people and the church bells at hours that make no sense. He never gave me a speech about it. He just lived it in front of me until home stopped being a house and became a country. That is a hard inheritance to explain on a customs form.

Which is how a woman living perfectly happily in Austin ended up in the sierra of Guanajuato.

A friend told us about a hippie artist town in the mountains. Cobblestones, painters, a pink church that looks designed by someone in the middle of a very good dream. My husband, Agapito, and I looked at each other with that particular expression married people get right before they do something enormous. We came. We stayed.

Everything about San Miguel de Allende was overwhelming and beautiful and unknown, all at once. I could not find grape jelly. I could not find a hardware store, then found eleven on the same block, all named after saints. I cried at least twice a week, sometimes from frustration and sometimes because I turned a corner at seven in the evening and the light hit the stone and it was too much beauty to absorb standing up.

Then it stopped being unknown and became mine. The smell of San Miguel in the morning, wood smoke and wet cobblestone and the sugar cloud outside a panadería. The energy of it, which anyone who has spent a week here will tell you is not a metaphor. People arrive to visit, stay twenty years, and never quite explain it to their families back home.

Agapito and I had sweet years here. We drove out to the hot springs when the week got heavy and sat in the water until our fingers pruned and our arguments dissolved, because it is hard to stay mad at someone while floating. We spent Sundays in the Jardín, and here I must explain something to the younger readers. This was before WhatsApp. You did not text to make a plan. You sat on a bench and the plan came to you, wearing a hat, carrying a bag of oranges, asking if you had eaten. Whole friendships were forged on those benches, and the ones still standing are the load bearing walls of my life.

I started writing for Atención back then. Practical things, where to find the impossible item, how to keep a non-chemical home without importing half of it. I did not know I was becoming a person who explains San Miguel to newcomers. I thought I was answering questions about vinegar.

The bipolar got bad. That is the shortest sentence in this essay, and the heaviest. Anyone who has loved someone through mental illness knows the particular grief of watching someone you adore be slowly relocated somewhere you cannot follow. I will not spend your afternoon on it. I will only say that the sweet years were real, and stayed real, and nothing that came after took them from me.

Agapito died. Later, so did my mother. Different times, different kinds of quiet in the house afterward. Grief does not stack neatly. It moves in and rearranges your furniture. I found myself in Seattle with a whole life built around me. Furniture, systems, insurance cards, the correct hoodie. Everything I knew, and a growing certainty that I did not want it.

I want to be honest about what came next, because we lie about this part. Deciding to pack it up and return to San Miguel was not brave and it was not romantic. It was terrifying. There is a specific terror in dismantling a life you spent years assembling, with no guarantee the next will hold your weight. I made the decision, felt sick, made it again the next morning, and did that until I packed the Toyota, put the dogs in the back, and got behind the wheel. That settled the argument.

Here is what I found on the other side. When you rebuild from zero, you get to choose the blueprint.

So I chose community. Radically, deliberately, as the whole point rather than a side effect. That is where ExperienceSMA came from, and why so much of it happens around a table with food on it. Not networking. Not a mixer. A table long enough that you cannot possibly talk only to the person you came with, where strangers pass the salsa and by dessert they have somebody to call. I have watched it happen a hundred times and I am not tired of it.

I am building a life here on my own terms, a phrase I would have found insufferable at twenty-five and now understand costs everything and is worth it.

The hole in the floorboard turned out to be the whole education. You go forward, you watch the road move underneath you, and you accept that some of the dust is going to end up in the truck. And reverse is never where you think it should be. Sometimes you have to push down, and over, and trust that going back is actually the way ahead.

Kat Sparks is the founder and curator of University of Expats and ExperienceSMA.

https://experiencesma.com/

 

San Miguel de Allende

The Meals We Remember

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By Michael Solof—

This month, I delve into the theme of food-related memories. Over the past seven years, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting singles and couples, newcomers and locals, at various restaurants each week through my group, SMA Adventure Hound. I’ve forged deep friendships with many chefs, owners, and managers throughout San Miguel de Allende. I thought it fitting to let them share some of their favorite food-related memories.

Keli Silveyra, Silveyra’s Restaurante
My husband, Ruben, and I never planned on owning a place here in SMA or even a restaurant at all. He is from Veracruz, Mexico, and I’m from the United States. In 2019, Ruben was deported from the U.S., and that became one of those moments where we had to see what we were made of. So, we came to Mexico and opened a Mexican-American family-style restaurant.

We started on January 22, 2020 and then the pandemic hit. Despite the challenges, we persevered. We cooked, served, learned, made mistakes, fixed those mistakes, and survived. Quitting wasn’t an option. With the help of family, friends, and faith, we kept going. The SMA community always showed up for us during these tough times. They supported us financially, checked in on us, encouraged us, and helped us every single day to keep the business alive. That meant more to us than I can ever truly explain.

Donnie Masterton, The Restaurant
Thirty years ago, during my first visit to San Miguel, I stumbled into Picasso Restaurante, located in a small pueblo. I ordered the flor de calabaza (squash blossom) soup, which was so good that I still compare every other version to it to this day. It was perfectly seasoned with a touch of spice and served with warm tortillas. Nothing complicated—just incredibly delicious. It was my first meal in San Miguel, and even all these years later, I can still remember exactly how it tasted.

Aleysha Serrato Garfias, Kokumi
My favorite food memory in SMA began on December 12, 2019. That’s the day I met Satoru and tasted his ramen for the first time. I was a vegetarian at the time, but I knew I had to try the dish exactly as he created it. I was considering inviting him to become my business partner, and I wanted to understand his cooking and the talent behind it. From the first taste, I knew he had to be a part of the project. Seven years later, he is not only my partner in Kokumi but also my husband. That bowl of ramen became much more than a meal – it was the beginning of our restaurant, our partnership and our life together.

Marie-Pascale Gérard, Wafflessence de Paul
Living and running my own Belgian restaurant in SMA brings a sense of wonder. My guests are always amazed to learn that our sugar doesn’t come from sugarcane, but from sugar beets. The sugar we use is imported directly from my family in Belgium, who have been running a sugar factory for over six generations. It brings a piece of my own history here to SMA.

Lucía Rios, Restaurante La Parada
I remember the excitement and uncertainty of my first day at La Parada; it felt like I was beginning a new chapter in my life. This role has given me my first opportunity to truly develop my talent as a chef, to grow, learn, and express my passion for Peruvian cuisine. One of my favorite dishes to prepare is the filete a la Huancaína because it encapsulates the flavors and traditions of Peruvian culture, which I love to share with our guests. Witnessing people enjoy and discover these flavors for the first time is something I’ll never forget.

Eduardo Humberto García Hernández, Cocina Saludable
I arrived in SMA nearly ten years ago. This wasn’t just a temporary stop for me; it became a place to build my life, both personally and professionally as a chef. My fondest culinary moments haven’t been confined within the four walls of a traditional restaurant; they occur in the warmth of the homes I deliver to every day.

When I founded Cocina Saludable, my home delivery and catering service, my goal was to give back to San Miguel a piece of what it has given me by cooking with the honest, comforting nostalgia of a homemade meal. I visit local markets to select the freshest ingredients and craft a unique, single dish made from the heart. The real magic happens at the door during delivery, where I get to see the smiles on people’s faces, knowing that the meal I prepared with care and love truly brightens their day.

Lizette Angel, Lolita Cocina Mexicana + Bar
I was raised in Tijuana, where my father often took us for carne asada street tacos and tortas at night. There were rows of stands, each serving charcoal-grilled steak tacos topped with cilantro, onion, avocado, and salsa. Those memories are unforgettable. Long before reaching the stands, you could smell the charcoal smoke that filled the entire street. I recently added a charcoal grill and carne asada tacos to our menu at Lolita’s, and I can’t stop eating them!

Marco Massarotti, Casa Nostra Restaurante
My girlfriend’s family was here visiting and challenged me to upscale the tamales they were having from a local street vendor. I accepted their challenge and reimagined it by taking a cake form, wrapping the masa around it, adding inside a braised beef, and topping it with a chile poblano sauce in a red wine reduction. Everybody loved it so much that we ended up putting it on our menu. This was a perfect case of making memories with my extended family, who unknowingly provided an exciting inspiration for a new item to feature at my restaurant.

Through these shared experiences, it’s clear that food does more than nourish; it cultivates community, builds relationships, and creates lasting memories. As you continue to explore the culinary landscape of San Miguel, remember that every dish has a story, and every meal is an opportunity to make new memories.

Michael Solof leads SMA Adventure Hound, a group which takes locals and newcomers to brunches and dinners at different restaurants every week and he also offers classes in the art of smartphone photography. You can contact him at WhatsApp +1-443-310-9214 for more info and to reserve.

 

San Miguel de Allende

To Delay the Third Death

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By Tonya Harmon—

I’m writing a memoir. It’s an exploration of the generations of my father’s Slovak family and what I inherited from them. I certainly don’t speak Slovak, and I wasn’t born in Slovakia. What, then, exactly did I inherit?

In conducting research for the book over the last 20 years, I became immersed in the past lives of relatives who were long gone and, in many cases, people I’d never even met. Their names appeared in a church registry for a birth or baptism, marriage or death, and little else. I wanted to know so much more about them: how they lived, what they ate, what they stood for, and what they believed in.

Where do you go to find these details, and can you even unearth them for a person who died nearly a century ago on another continent?

I decided to start with the living. I studied the picture of my family on the day they left Yugoslavia in 1938 and tracked down a woman who was a teenager at the time.

Julka was 14 when our families emigrated to Canada together and was in her late eighties when we met. She remembered my great-grandfather’s bakery and how she would walk past the other bakeries to go to his, the best in town. Every day at the end of the school day, my great-uncle Andy would ride his bike to the schoolyard and ring his bell. His basket was filled with baguettes and zemle, plump round rolls, and kifle, the crescent-shaped rolls said to have inspired the croissant.

Julka remembered the taste of the kifle and how she had spent her whole life searching for one that tasted as good as she remembered but never found it. Julka died a few months after our interview.

She remembered the day the picture was taken, that it was raining, and that her boyfriend had arranged the send-off. My great-grandmother had stood behind the camera, taking one last picture of her son, daughter-in-law, and only granddaughter, Datka. “My eyes will never see you again,” she said.

I traveled to Yugoslavia to meet relatives and learned about my great-uncle Stefan, the family jokester. Once at a wedding, he’d sprinkled hot paprika on the toilet paper and sat back laughing as people came out of the outhouse hopping and itching. He also hid ammunition in the water well for partisans fighting against fascists in WWII.

On the internet I found a website in Slovak written by an elderly man who had lived his whole life in the same village as my family. He had written about the history of the town and my family. I tracked Jan down and we began a decade-long conversation through Facebook, him in Slovak, me in English. We traded stories and genealogical facts and became friends. I was devastated when he died suddenly two years ago.

As I traveled to meet people and collected historical facts about the places and times they lived in, the lives of my long-gone relatives slowly started to come alive for me. I found the family recipe for the kifle Julka remembered and made them, enjoying the taste as much as Julka did. I saw bundles of drying peppers hanging from the porches in the village where Stefan had lived. I wrote to the German government requesting details about family members who had been arrested and read bureaucratic records containing unanswered letters from relatives begging for information about their loved ones.

In 2011, Jaro Miklović took me from house to house in my family’s hometown. At each stop, food appeared before we had finished asking questions: sausage, bread, cakes, glasses raised in welcome. Albums came out. I took pictures of photographs hanging on walls and held family samplers stitched more than a hundred years earlier.

Again and again, someone who had been a stranger, appearing only as a name in the family tree, stopped feeling like one.

Over the years, recipes crossed oceans. Photographs resurfaced. Distant relatives found one another. Objects and stories moved from one branch of the family to another.

Living in Mexico has made me think differently about what it means to remember the dead. Here people sometimes speak of Las Tres Muertes, the Three Deaths.

The first death is when the body stops working and the heart stops beating. The second is when the body is buried. The third comes when the last living person who remembers you forgets your name. That is when you disappear completely.

The idea is often connected to Día de Muertos. Families build an ofrenda and place photographs on it, lighting candles, telling stories, and putting out the favorite foods of the people who have died, believing this may entice them to come home for the day.

It is one of the most beautiful things about living in Mexico. It is colorful and joyful, but underneath it is something very serious. Remembering is an act of love, and perhaps also an act of preservation.

I thought about this when I received an email from a woman looking for an old friend named Juan Carlos. She had known him in the early 1970s. He was the first cousin of my aunt’s former husband, part of another Slovak immigrant family whose members had settled in both Canada and Argentina. She found me because of something I had written about the death of my aunt’s twenty-three-year-old daughter, Karla, in 1993.

I vaguely remembered Juan Carlos. He had visited our family in Montreal once. He was tall and thin and very kind and was studying to become a pediatrician.

I had to tell her that he had died young, more than forty years earlier.

A few years later, she wrote again.
This time she wanted to speak to his sister.
I sat looking at the email.
After all those years, she still remembered him.
His body had died, he had been buried, but his name had not disappeared.
She still remembered.

Maybe Slovak families have been doing the same thing in their own way all along, not with marigolds and sugar skulls, but with recipes, family trees, photographs kept in drawers and hung on walls. And with names repeated at our kitchen tables.
With a woman writing to me more than forty years later asking about a young man she had once known. Memory, it appears, traveled farther than the people themselves.

I came to Mexico believing I had followed my own route very far from home. Instead, I found myself living in a place that understood what I had been doing for years.

My great-grandmother’s crystal bowls in my armoire are part of that ofrenda. So is the kifle, the family tree, the photographs I copied from albums, and the stories told at the kitchen table.
So is this book.

For a long time, I thought I was collecting evidence.
I understand now that I was also collecting people.
Julka. Andy. Stefan. Jan. Jaro. Karla. Juan Carlos.
Each time I recover a name from a church register, identify someone in a photograph, translate a letter, or repeat a story, that person is back with us for a little while.
Perhaps that is what family history is for.
To delay the third death.

Tonya Harmon lives in SMA and is a wealth of knowledge about food and cheese: http://www.EmpressofCheese.com

 

San Miguel de Allende

Calling All Animal Angels!

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By Joe Howell, Ashlee Lane & Kiko Rodriguez—

San Miguel de Allende has long been home to a deeply compassionate animal rescue community. Yet critical gaps remain in how dogs and cats—and the people who care for them—are supported.

Enter Animal Angels SMA, a new U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) organization founded by three longtime animalistas in San Miguel de Allende. Its mission focuses on three areas aimed at addressing some of the root causes of animal neglect and hardship: Nourish, Transport, Educate.

Nourish
No family should have to choose between feeding their household and feeding a beloved animal. Animal Angels SMA is developing a local animal food bank with three areas of focus. The first supports independent rescuers caring for dogs and cats taken off the streets.

The second works with established organizations in San Miguel to identify families experiencing hardship in the campo. The goal is to offer short-term assistance through regular despensas of dog and cat food, helping families keep their animals fed during difficult periods.

The third initiative will test a feeding station in San Miguel, providing food and water for street dogs at a designated location. Working with the surrounding community, Animal Angels SMA hopes to ensure the station is maintained and that animals have regular access to food and water.

Transport
Finding local homes for every rescued animal is an uphill battle. Animal Angels SMA helps transport rescued dogs north of the border, where they can be placed in permanent homes in the United States and Canada. Each successful placement also frees up valuable space and resources for rescuers here in San Miguel.

The Animal Angels SMA team has already been helping dogs make these journeys, either by flying them to major cities in the United States and Canada or through the Rescue Express, a bus capable of transporting as many as 70 dogs to new homes in the U.S.

Thousands of Mexican rescue dogs have been safely transported north through these efforts over the years. In July and August alone, dogs were sent to Toronto, New York, Portland and Iowa. Animal Angels SMA may be new in town, but the people behind it have been doing this work for a long time.

Educate
True, lasting change begins with prevention. Animal Angels SMA is developing community outreach and school programs designed to teach children about responsible pet care and the humane treatment of companion animals.

The education program is still in its early stages, and the team recognizes that reaching young people throughout the community will be a significant undertaking. But teaching empathy and responsible animal care to the next generation is an important part of creating long-term change.

It Takes a Village
When it comes to animal welfare, the old saying really does apply: it takes a village. No single rescue group or organization can solve the problem alone.

Animal Angels SMA was created around the belief that collaboration increases everyone’s impact. Whether you’re an independent foster, a local business owner, a frequent flyer or simply someone who would like to see fewer hungry animals on San Miguel’s streets, there is a way to help.

A bag of dog food costs MXN $305 and a bag of cat food MXN $430, and food donations help support the Nourish program.
Travelers can also become flight angels, escorting a rescued dog to its new home in the United States or Canada. Those flying Aeroméxico, Volaris or Viva may be able to accompany a dog at no cost to themselves.

Animal Angels SMA is also looking for volunteers to help package food and deliver it to communities in the campo, as well as people willing to host small “Yappy Hour” gatherings where friends and neighbors can learn about the organization’s work.

Together, we can help make compassion for San Miguel’s four-legged residents part of everyday life.

Want to become an Animal Angel?
Follow @animalangelssma on Facebook and Instagram for upcoming fundraising events, volunteer opportunities and updates on the organization’s programs.
animalangelssma@gmail.com

Donations can be made via PayPal or Zelle to:
Friends of Mexican Animal Welfare

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

Editor’s Letter

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By Jane Bauer—

You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.
-Louise Bourgeois

Who would you be without your memories? Without the ideas you have collected about yourself, about others and the world around you? I have thought a lot about this in the last couple of years as I cared for my mother who was shedding her memories the way a tree loses its leaves when winter is coming. At first there was a panic as to what would happen, what would be left and how would we cope if we got to the point where I was a stranger.

Of course there was a resistance, a desire to hold on to every moment and remembrance, but that resistance itself was a form of disease built by fear and the unknown. Eventually the path we chose was acceptance and the world around us loosened, tension slackened and we made space for new things. My mother never forgot who I was but sometimes she didn’t know that I was her daughter, I was maybe a sister or a friend or even her mother. I, in turn, had to release my resistance to the idea of her as my mother. Whoever she thought I was, I wanted her to associate me with love and safety and I let that dictate my reaction to each situation we faced.

She saw the environment around us with new eyes each day and she took me along for the ride. Without the clutter of the past we would marvel at the new green shoots of leaves on a plant or the rising of the moon. How miraculous to see the rising of the moon as though for the first time!

Our memories can be tools. They can transport us to a moment in time in the past and we can feel the texture of an object we haven’t held for years or conjure up the smell of our childhood bedroom. Our memories can also be weapons. Some people hold on to grudges like they are precious riches. Our memories can also be unreliable. Women who experience childbirth often say in the moment they will never do it again only to do it again once the pain has passed and they are holding a newborn in their arms.

And perhaps memory reaches beyond what we consciously remember. Like the complex networks beneath forests, where trees exchange resources and information through their roots and fungal partners, we too are connected to what came before us. Scientists are exploring whether some effects of our ancestors’ experiences may be carried through epigenetic mechanisms – chemical changes that affect how genes are expressed without changing the DNA sequence itself. In animals, there is compelling evidence that some of these effects can cross generations; in humans, the science is still unfolding. What we inherit may be more complicated than the stories we have been told.
None of us is an island.

This month our writers explore memory in many different forms. Thank you for reading.

See you next month,

Jane

San Miguel de Allende

Moxi Omakase: The Taco Edition Nine Thousand Years in a Tortilla

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By Kat Sparks

Chef Juan Carlos Hernandez recently turned Moxi, the restaurant inside Hotel Matilda, into a stage for one of Mexico’s oldest and most personal foods, the taco. Moxi Omakase: The Taco Edition, a curated dining event from ExperienceSMA, sold out within days. It was a chef’s-table tasting in which each course arrived one at a time. Every plate carried the kind of intention usually reserved for fine dining, built entirely around masa, salsa, and fire. It was a small, intimate evening—and a good excuse to explore why San Miguel de Allende takes its corn so seriously.

Why Hotel Matilda Is the Perfect Stage
Hotel Matilda has always stood a little apart from the rest of San Miguel. Most of the city leans into its 500-year-old colonial bones, but Matilda opened in 2010 with sleek white Cubist lines and a gallery’s worth of contemporary Mexican art tucked into every courtyard. The hotel takes its name from a 1940s Diego Rivera portrait of Matilda Stream, the owner’s mother, which still hangs in the collection today. Sculptures by Javier Marín greet guests near the entrance, and pieces by artists like Bosco Sodi and Aldo Chaparro fill the interiors, a place built on the idea that Mexican tradition and Mexican innovation belong in the same room, a fitting home for a menu that does exactly that with corn.

Moxi, the hotel’s restaurant, has built its own reputation around globally minded Mexican cuisine that respects tradition without being trapped by it. An omakase-style taco tasting was a natural next step. Omakase, borrowed from Japanese dining, means leaving the choices to the chef and trusting them to walk you through a story course by course. Chef Hernandez used that format to tell a very old story indeed.

Nine Thousand Years in a Tortilla
The story behind the taco begins roughly 9,000 years ago in the Balsas River Valley, where early farmers began domesticating a wild grass called teosinte. Over countless generations of careful selection, that tough, barely edible grass became maize, the crop that would go on to define an entire culinary civilization. Over time, Mesoamerican cultures combined corn with beans, creating a nutritionally complementary pairing that remains central to Mexican cooking.

By the time the Aztecs were building their empire, tortillas already had a name, tlaxcalli. They filled them with beans, chile stews, moles, and proteins ranging from turkey to deer, creating an early form of what we now recognize as the taco. A crucial technique called nixtamalization unlocked nutrients the grain had been hiding all along. Dried corn is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, and the process gives masa its distinctive flavor and pliability, still exactly how tortillas are made today, by hand in small kitchens and by machine in tortillerías alike.

The taco kept evolving after the Spanish arrived, absorbing new ingredients like pork, beef, and dairy. Centuries later, Lebanese immigrants brought the vertical rotisserie to Mexico, and that collision of cultures produced tacos al pastor, now one of the country’s most beloved styles. The taco has never stopped adapting, from Aztec markets to food trucks worldwide, exactly the spirit Chef Hernandez channeled at Moxi.

The Many Faces of Mexican Corn
What makes Mexican corn so extraordinary is not just its age, but its diversity. More than 60 recognized criollo, or native, varieties of maize grow across the country, each shaped by centuries of local farming and suited to a different dish. A few of them explain why a taco in Oaxaca can taste worlds apart from a taco in Mexico City, even when both start with nothing more than corn, water, and fire.

Cacahuazintle is a large, hard-kerneled white corn grown around Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Mexico City, prized above all for pozole, where its chewy texture is the whole point. Chapalote, believed to be one of the oldest cultivated corns in the Americas, produces small conical ears and connects modern kitchens to Mexico’s earliest farmers. Olotillo, a delicate white corn from Oaxaca, shows up in tlayudas and tostadas, while Chalqueño, a robust yellow variety from the State of Mexico region, leans into soups and stews. Oaxaca’s iconic blue corn gives tlayudas and many tortillas their striking color and earthier flavor, and chefs across Mexico have been rediscovering it as part of a broader movement back toward heirloom grains.

Broadly speaking, Mexican corn falls into two big families. Dent corn is usually yellow or white and high in starch, the workhorse behind hominy and masa harina, the foundation of tortillas and tamales. Sweet corn, by contrast, is what shows up grilled on a stick as elote, sold by street vendors slathered in crema, cheese, and chile. Every taco is a decision about which corn to use, and chefs like Hernandez are increasingly making that decision purposefully rather than by default.

A Story Told Course by Course
Chef Hernandez leaned into that history rather than around it. An omakase format built entirely on tacos gave him room to move through different corn varieties, salsas, and techniques course by course, the way a sushi chef might move through cuts of fish. Guests were not just eating a meal. They were tasting nine millennia of agricultural history, reinterpreted inside one of San Miguel’s most design-forward spaces.

What stayed with me after the last plate was cleared was not any single dish, but the sense of eating a timeline. A tortilla is never just a tortilla. It is a choice, made by a farmer, a chef, or a grandmother, about which corn tells the story best. If you have ever wanted to understand why Mexicans take their corn so seriously, an evening like Moxi Omakase: The Taco Edition explains it, one exquisite bite at a time.

Kat Sparks is the founder and curator of University of Expats and ExperienceSMA.

http://www.universityofexpats.com

San Miguel de Allende

Love in San Miguel

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By Audrey Jacobs—

Thirty years ago I came to San Miguel on my honeymoon. I fell in love with the city and remember thinking, “One day I’m coming back to live here.”

Life had other plans. I stayed in San Diego, raised three sons, built a career, got divorced, and forgot I had the freedom to live anywhere.

Then last year, at 55, an uncomfortable romantic relationship reminded me that life’s too short, so I bought a one-way ticket to return to San Miguel.

I definitely didn’t move here to start a singles organization. I was simply looking for my next chapter. What I found first was loneliness.

I worked remotely, usually from home or a café, and almost every night I made myself go out. Through TEDx and the Jewish community I met wonderful people right away. Daily there were concerts, lectures, art openings, dinner parties and hikes.

Still, I’d come home to an empty house and feel… empty. I wanted a romantic partner, but I also wanted my people. It felt like freshman year of college. You’re friendly with everyone but connected to very few.

When it came to dating, everyone had advice.
One woman proudly told me, “My Mexican boyfriend is 20 years younger. He adores me. I pay for everything and I don’t mind. You need to find yourself a hot young Mexican.” Good on her.

Then I kept hearing immigrant women say the same thing. “There are no good men in San Miguel.” They’re wrong. Maybe not as many as women, but they’re here. And I kept meeting them.

Once I decided I was ready to date, within two months I met four men I liked. The best one became my friend first. A handsome Mexican man, we met at ecstatic dance and spent almost every day together walking, talking, laughing and exploring San Miguel with no pressure. Even if nothing romantic had happened, I would’ve been grateful to have a companion. Then one evening his usual kiss on the cheek landed on my lips. Today, six months later, we’re happily together.

“The more people I meet, the more I realize finding love isn’t a dating problem. It’s a connection problem.”

I’ve met people who just buried a spouse after 50 years of marriage. People recovering from divorce. People who have never married. People who don’t want a relationship right now. They want someone to have dinner with, hear music with, travel with or call on a bad day. They want to find their people.

Then a photo memory from my old singles dinner parties in San Diego popped up on my phone. On June 3, I posted a simple question in a San Miguel Facebook group.

“Looking for love?”
Six hundred likes, hundreds of comments, and more than 500 private messages later, I knew I’d hit a nerve.

Two months later, more than 350 people have joined Love in San Miguel | Amor en San Miguel. Fifty-five percent are native Spanish speakers. Our community ranges in age from 25 to 85. From day one, I wanted our group to be bilingual and bi-cultural because loneliness is universal.

I’ve been a matchmaker for over 30 years, but before our first event on July 7, I was terrified. Would anyone come? Would people talk to each other? Would they leave thinking, “Well… that was awkward?”

Instead, 60 people showed up with another 200 on the waitlist.
Before anyone sat down, we handed every guest a “connection card” and asked them to find a stranger. “What have you always wanted to learn?” “What are you passionate about?” “What are you looking forward to?” Within minutes the room buzzed. English and Spanish mixed together. Mexicans and immigrants. People in their 30s talking with people in their 70s. It was exactly what I’d hoped for.

Then came dinner, and with it, the stories. One woman had just ended a 34-year marriage. Another drove 90 minutes because he didn’t know where else to meet thoughtful people.
Again and again I heard the same thing. “I just want a safe place to meet good people.”

I’m building Love in San Miguel in real time with my amazing bicultural partner, Araceli Kopiloff. Originally from Uruguay, Araceli has called Mexico home for many years. We learn from every event and our community helps us shape what comes next.

There will be curated matchmaking dinners, outdoor adventures, volunteer projects, workshops, speakers, and many experiences for people to find their people.

We don’t have it all figured out yet, but we’re enjoying the crazy creation phase. It means we’re listening instead of assuming what everyone wants.

Here’s what I didn’t expect. Married couples keep asking to join. They aren’t looking for romance, but they’re lonely too. They want couple friends, dinner friends, people to travel with.

For now, we’re staying focused on singles, but it reminded me that loneliness doesn’t disappear just because you found a spouse. I can’t promise anyone they’ll find the love of their life. Nobody can.

But I can design carefully crafted experiences where strangers become friends, and maybe some of those friendships become love. San Miguel is too magical to love alone.

Interested? Love in San Miguel | Amor en San Miguel
http://www.loveinsanmiguel.com

Audrey Jacobs is the founder and chief matchmaker of Love in San Miguel | Amor en San Miguel. She is a TEDx speaker whose talk has been viewed nearly 200,000 times. Audrey lives in San Miguel de Allende and believes the city is too magical to love alone.

Photography by Armando Espinoza

San Miguel de Allende

Stirring the Glass: The Spice Revolution Behind San Miguel’s Cocktails

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By Michael Solof—

Spices don’t just shape the flavors on San Miguel’s plates—they’re also finding their way into some of the city’s most creative cocktails. To learn more, I stopped by Bekeb at Live Aqua. Bekeb has been ranked among North America’s 50 Best Bars. There I spoke with Marco, one of their lead mixologists, about how traditional ingredients and modern techniques come together behind the bar.

“The beverages we serve here are rooted in tradition and driven by creativity,” says Marco. “We honor Mexico’s ancestral ingredients while embracing modern techniques and presentations.”

Bekeb, which means “seed” in the Tzotzil language, opened its doors in 2019 and has since become one of Mexico’s most respected cocktail destinations. The bar’s menu is built around Mexican spirits, regional ingredients, and carefully crafted flavor combinations. Herbal, citrus, tropical, and savory cocktails are presented with meticulous attention to detail, from the ice and garnish to the glassware itself.

“All the distillates and liqueurs we use are of exceptional quality,” Marco explains. “We make our own juices, and some ingredients are even harvested directly from a ranch, including lavender.”

Two cocktails perfectly illustrate Bekeb’s approach.
The Tepache Cocktail (Water Honey) combines pox, cocoa liqueur, fine sherry, pulque, coconut extract, and cocoa foam. One of its key ingredients is aguamiel, the naturally sweet sap extracted from pulquero agave and fermented for several days before use.

Another standout is the Cocktail Copal (Tomato), a savory blend of Ocho Blanco tequila, Dolin Blanc vermouth, celery bitters, and pickled tomatillo.

“It’s our version of a Mexican martini,” says Marco. “Very dry, herbal, and clean.”

Of course, Bekeb isn’t the only place in San Miguel exploring the relationship between spices and beverages. Traditional drinks throughout Mexico have long incorporated aromatic ingredients and spices in creative ways.

Atole is a comforting hot beverage made from masa and often flavored with cinnamon or chocolate.

Horchata, a refreshing drink made from rice, cinnamon, and sugar, provides a cooling counterpoint to many of Mexico’s spicier dishes.

Pulque, a fermented agave beverage consumed for centuries, is still enjoyed throughout central Mexico, with some variations incorporating herbs, spices, and local fruits.

And for those seeking a little extra heat, many local bars have put their own spin on the classic margarita by adding jalapeño or serrano peppers, creating a cocktail that is both refreshing and fiery.

Whether served in a clay mug, a traditional glass, or a carefully crafted cocktail coupe, San Miguel’s beverages tell the same story as its cuisine: one of tradition, innovation, and a deep appreciation for flavor.

Michael Solof leads SMA Adventure Hound, a group that takes locals and newcomers to weekly brunches and dinners at different restaurants. He also offers classes in smartphone photography. You can contact him at WhatsApp +1-443-310-9214 for more info and to reserve.