Chef Lupita
Xtabentún Yucateco
Yucatán's Maya honey-anise liqueur, built on toasted green anise, aged rum, and Melipona honey from the stingless bees the Maya have kept for two thousand years.
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Chef Lupita
Michelada Yucateca con Habanero
Yucatan's cantina michelada, built on cold Mexican lager, lima agria, charred habanero salsa, and a chile-salt rim. The Peninsula's answer to a forty-degree afternoon.
Chef Lupita
Margarita de Habanero Yucateca
Yucatán's habanero margarita, built on blanco tequila infused with the peninsula's signature orange habanero, fresh lima agria, and salt from Las Coloradas. Hot, citrusy, and unforgiving.
Chef Lupita
Mojito de Lima Agria Yucateco
The Peninsula's answer to the Cuban mojito, built on lima agria, the floral sour lime of Yucatán, with yerbabuena, white rum, and crushed ice. More perfume than punch, and meant to be drunk the moment it is built.
Chef Lupita
Café Maya Flameado
Mérida's tableside ritual. Hot café de olla spiked with Xtabentún and Kahlúa, set alight in front of the guests, finished with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that melts the flame away.
Chef Lupita
Café Lechero Meridano
Mérida's two-pitcher coffee ritual: strong black coffee in one hand, piloncillo-sweetened hot milk in the other, poured side by side at the table the way the cafeterías of the Yucatán centro have done it for a hundred years.
Chef Lupita
Café de Olla Yucateco
Yucatán's café de olla, brewed slowly in clay with piloncillo, true canela, and the Peninsula's pimienta gorda. The allspice is the signature. Earthy, warm, and unmistakably from the Mayab.
Chef Lupita
Saká
The Maya sacred white-corn drink from Yucatán. Unnixtamalized white corn simmered in clean spring water until the liquid turns the color of bone. Offered to Cháak the rain god before any human tastes it.
Chef Lupita
Xocolatl Maya
The pre-Hispanic Maya chocolate drink from the Yucatan peninsula. Toasted cacao ground with chile and achiote, dissolved in cool water, frothed by pouring from one clay jarro into another. Bitter, savory, sacred.
Chef Lupita
Tan-Chucuá Yucateco
Yucatán's chocolate atole, thickened with masa and perfumed with anise, pimienta gorda, and true canela. Less sweet than champurrado, deeply Maya, the drink of cold December dawns in Mérida.
Chef Lupita
Chocolate Caliente Yucateco
Yucatán's December cup. Mexican chocolate tablets melted into milk with true canela and pimienta gorda, whisked with a molinillo until the foam crowns the jarrito. The drink that closes a Mérida holiday night.
Chef Lupita
Horchata Yucateca de Almendras
Yucatán's almond-rich horchata, rice and almonds soaked overnight, blended with true canela, sweetened with milk and evaporated milk, and poured over crushed ice in the afternoon heat of Mérida.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Jamaica Yucateca
Yucatán's hibiscus agua, flor de jamaica steeped off the heat with canela and pimienta gorda, sweetened with piloncillo, and chilled until the deep ruby color is the most-poured drink on the Peninsula.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Chaya con Limón
Yucatán's everyday tonic of boiled chaya leaves blended with lima agria, sugar, and ice. The bright green jarra that sits on every Peninsula table from Mérida to Valladolid.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Lima Yucateca
The Peninsula's floral sour-lime refresher, juiced cold and perfumed with a single strip of peel. The aroma is what makes it Yucatecan, and a Persian lime will not get you there.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Pitaya Yucateca
Yucatán's summer agua fresca, made from cactus-fruit pitaya, cold water, lima agria, and just enough sugar to lift the magenta pulp. The drink that turns Mérida's afternoon heat bearable.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Chaya con Piña
Yucatán's signature green agua fresca, chaya leaves blanched and blended with ripe pineapple and lima agria, served ice-cold from a sweating glass jarra against the Mérida heat.
Chef Lupita
Naranjada de Naranja Agria
Yucatán's sour orange ade, juiced fresh from naranja agria with sugar and cold water. More floral and aromatic than any limeada, the Peninsula's signature refresher poured from a sweating glass jarra on a Mérida afternoon.
Chef Lupita
Agua de Saramuyo
Yucatán's sugar apple agua fresca, the cream-white flesh of the saramuyo seeded by hand, blended with cold water and a little sugar until silky. Vanilla-floral, faintly tropical, a Mérida market-day treat.
Chef Lupita
Horchata de Coco Yucateca
Yucatán's coconut horchata, rice steeped overnight with canela, blended with fresh coconut meat from the peninsula, finished with leche condensada and served over ice while the sun is still high in Mérida.
Chef Lupita
Champola de Mamey
Yucatán's mamey champola, ripe sapote whipped into cold milk until the surface rises into a pale orange foam. Mérida's afternoon antidote to the heat, served in a tall glass at a sorbeteria that has been pouring it for a hundred years.
Chef Lupita
Champola de Coco Yucateca
Yucatán's coconut champola, a generous scoop of fresh coconut sorbete in a tall glass of cold whole milk. The drink the sorbeterias of Mérida have been ladling out to overheated children since before the electric freezer existed.
Chef Lupita
Champola de Mantecado de Mérida
Mérida's tall-glass float born at Sorbetería El Colón in 1907: mantecado scented with canela and lima agria, drowned in cold whole milk, eaten with a long spoon and drunk with a wide straw on the hottest afternoons of the Yucatán.
Chef Lupita
Limonada Eléctrica Sin Alcohol
Mérida's cantina mocktail of lima agria, piloncillo, hierbabuena, cucumber, and a flick of chile piquin over cold mineral water. Drunk on a porch in the heat, the kind that resets you for the rest of the day.
Chef Lupita
Virgin Mojito de Lima Agria con Yerbabuena
Yucatan's afternoon refresher, built on lima agria, fresh yerbabuena, and cold mineral water. The drink the cantinas of Merida pour when the sun is too high overhead to think about rum.
Chef Lupita
Paloma Virgen Yucateca
The Yucatán's virgin paloma, pink grapefruit and lima agria over ice with cold mineral water and a salt-rimmed glass. The drink that gets you through a Mérida afternoon when the heat refuses to break.
Chef Lupita
Licuado de Papaya Yucateco
Yucatán's morning licuado, ripe Maradol papaya blended thick with cold whole milk, sugar, and ice. The tropical heart of the Peninsula in a tall sweating glass.
Chef Lupita
Licuado de Saramuyo
Yucatán's saramuyo licuado, the sugar apple's custard flesh scooped from the skin, seeded by hand, blended cold with milk and a whisper of canela. A drink that only exists when the fruit is in season.
Chef Lupita
Licuado de Mamey
Yucatán's afternoon licuado. Ripe mamey sapote blended with cold milk, a little sugar, and ice until it pours thick and orange-pink. Drinks like dessert, sits like breakfast.
Chef Lupita
Té de Jamaica con Pimienta Gorda
Yucatán's hibiscus tea, steeped hot with canela, cloves, and the Peninsula's own pimienta gorda. Drunk warm when the cool wind blows in from the Gulf, iced when the sun returns.
Chef Lupita
Té de Chaya con Hierbabuena
Yucatán's restorative infusion of chaya leaves and yerbabuena, boiled fifteen minutes to release the iron and finished with Melipona honey. A Maya tonic that has held its place on the peninsula for centuries.
Chef Lupita
Tisana de Yerbabuena Yucateca
Yucatán's after-dinner mint infusion, fresh yerbabuena bruised and steeped in hot water with a strip of lima agria, sweetened with miel de melipona from the Peninsula's native stingless bees.
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