Daniel Nates isn’t your typical media-savvy chef. You won’t catch him brandishing gold-plated tweezers or flaunting imported truffles on Instagram. His language is different: heirloom corn, wild chiles, and the sweet resin of ocote wood crackling in the hearth. Night after night, inside Maizal’s snug 28-seat dining room at Puebla’s Casona de los Sapos, he serves a sensory story that begins in the milpa and ends deep in the Sierra Norte. More than a menu, it’s an edible map.
Born in Puebla to two biologist parents, Nates learned to classify leaves long before he could whip egg whites. By eight he was reciting the Latin names of quelites like a botanical poem; by thirteen he was fermenting pulque, fascinated that “something alive could transform into something else.” That scientific curiosity became his compass. When it came time to choose a career, he chose the stove—discovering that food could translate biodiversity into a universal tongue.
In his early twenties, with no investors or safety net, he launched Maizal as a roaming pop-up. He’d pack plates and pans into a battered car, lay long tables on borrowed rooftops, and sell tickets—six courses plus a talk on terroir—through social media. They’d vanish in minutes. The buzz convinced a boutique hotel to give the project a permanent home in 2019. The setting changed, but the ethos stayed: local product, tight menu, and a wood-fired hearth as gravitational center.
His cooking beats to the weather’s rhythm. Early rains bring pine mushrooms; searing heat sparks chogostas and jade-green serrano chiles. Every dish bears a name that sounds like a journey or a blaze—Paso de Cortés, Smoke & Soot, Quiltamal. The last—a tamal of wild greens, bean pinole, and avocado leaf—won him the 2016 S.Pellegrino Young Chef title for Latin America. Stepping onto the podium, he thanked the families who supply his corn before he thanked the judges—an encapsulation of his creed: credit the community before the chef.
Far from the spotlight, Nates drives weekly into mountain villages to negotiate fair prices and make sure the oak-honey keeps its balsamic notes or the serrano beans arrive with the earthiness his frothy mole needs. The tasting menu changes every eight weeks, tracking the agricultural moon.
Diners leave Maizal wearing the scent of hoja santa in their
clothes—and the suspicion that Mexican cuisine’s future lies not
in imitating European sophistication but in listening to stories the
milpas still hold. T
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