This is going to be good.
This is going to be good.

In my review of Manolin, published almost a year ago, I said that it "feels like a beach vacation—not the cheesy kind with blended drinks and fresh towels, but the kind of oasis you might discover at the end of a bumpy ride down a dusty road, where you take up residence in a palapa and subsist on fresh fruit, seafood, and warm tequila for weeks."

Having just returned from a road trip through the Yucatán Peninsula doing almost exactly that—snorkeling in the clear teal waters of the Caribbean, lying on the beach, listening to geckos call, counting mosquito bites, and eating creamy avocados, oozy, overripe mangoes, as well as ceviches studded with delectably sweet conch—that description holds.

It's been too long since I've eaten at Manolin, which was inspired in part by a trip owners Rachel Johnson and Joe Sundberg took through the Yucatán, but I found myself thinking of it (and, specifically, its halibut with green mole and rockfish ceviche with sweet potato) as I lay in the sun, making a mental note to go back soon after my return to Seattle.

Yucatecan food is noticeably spicier than other regional Mexican food—incendiary habaneros are the chilies of choice, and they light up your lips, fingers, and tongue in a hot instant. Dishes are also bright and acidic; seafood ceviches are given life with copious of amounts of fresh lime juice. But what struck me most about the food was its smokiness.

Much of the peninsula is tropical jungle and forest; it's constantly abuzz with the sounds of insects, birds, and reptiles. The land is wild and life is still steeped in the traditions of the Mayan people. Electricity and gas are expensive, so cooking is done over wood, imbuing everything with a tremendous depth of flavor—smoke, sweetness, nuttiness, char. Even the fresh corn tortillas, griddled over a fire, that I bought from a man named Lucio who sold them from the back of his pick-up truck in a small fishing village, had dark flavor notes.

The heart of Manolin's kitchen is a large wood-fired hearth in which chef Alex Barkley cooks proteins on a cast iron plancha above glowing coals. The inspiration came from not just classic Yucatecan cooking, but from a restaurant called Hartwood, an entirely wood-fired restaurant using traditional Mayan ingredients, started by New Yorkers Eric Werner and Mya Henry in 2010.

Hartwood is located in Tulum, a once quiet and remote beach town that despite strict construction regulations and limited electricity and plumbing, is rapidly developing into a commercial zone of hotels, resorts, yoga studios, and high-end boutiques. Hartwood started as an improbable leap of faith, but thanks to features in publications like the New York Times and Lucky Peach, it's become an international dining destination. (On the one day I was in Tulum, I stopped by Hartwood just after the restaurant opened at 5:30 p.m. and was promptly told that the all the restaurant's tables—and its wait list—were completely full for the evening. I was instructed to come back the next day at three p.m. to try and get on the list. But I was leaving in the morning and, luckily, there's plenty of terrific food in Tulum. I recommend the al pastor—roasted on hot coals—and cabeza tacos from Aca Los Tacos, a family run stand on a side street in town.)

Hartwood chef Eric Werner doesn't purport to cook Mexican or Mayan food, though he's strongly dedicated to its techniques and ingredients. According to the Times, "Mr. Werner’s cooking tools are primitive, but his cooking style is decidedly modern, in tune with the hive mind of today’s culinary elite. These chefs are rewriting the menu of fine dining...aiming for food that is natural, minimal and egalitarian. In this movement, sometimes called 'New Nordic' even in the tropics, geographic labels like Mexican are losing their weight, and food that is regionally 'authentic' is no longer the quest. All this is why the world has begun to beat a path to Hartwood’s (rusty) gate."

It's part of what led Manolin's Johnson and Sundberg, who have since taken tropical elements and flavors and married them to native Pacific Northwest ingredients, to Hartwood, where every element of the restaurant—food, cooking equipment, and design—sparked their imaginations and cemented their vision for Manolin.

"Hartwood was the single most influential restaurant Rachel and I visited before opening Manolin," Sundberg told me. "We wrote our 'business plan' after a night there."

When I got back to Seattle, I nosed around Manolin's Facebook page, where I was delighted to see that this coming Monday, April 18, the restaurant, in conjunction with Fremont's Book Larder, is hosting Eric Werner for a five-course meal inspired by his cookbook Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán.

"It seems like there is something about the Yucatán/Hartwood and Manolin that's like this strange circular vortex," Sundberg said. "Our chef Alex Barkley was just there in December, before we knew we'd be doing this event."

Barkley's draft menu for the dinner looks fantastic: Albacore ceviche with grapefruit; rockfish ceviche with mezcal and chamomile; halibut with white beans and cilantro crema; pork belly with honey, poblanos, and pickles; chocolate habanero cake with sour avocado. The dinner is sure to sell out, but Sundberg says there are a few seats left. You can get them through Book Larder here.

When I wrote my review of Manolin last spring, one criticism I had was that some of the proteins were unevenly cooked, as though Barkley occasionally struggled with the temperature of the coals on which he was cooking.

But as Werner writes in the Hartwood cookbook, fire is "a force of nature that you can direct but you can't fully control...You're not going to learn how to grill over wood from a cookbook, you're going to learn by doing. You need to watch the flames, the wood, the food. You need to make mistakes. You will get better, but it will take time."

Last summer Manolin was named one of "America's Best New Restaurants" by Bon Appétit magazine. I have no doubt that Manolin's talented chef and cooks have grown and developed—and that they'll be putting their best forward at next week's dinner.

"It's weird and awesome for us to be hosting this event," said Sundberg. "We will be laying it on thick."