Enrique Olvera has 14 restaurants in cities from New York and Los Angeles to Mexico City but he likes to spend his downtime far from the hustle of a busy service. When Monocle pulls up at his wooden bungalow in Reserva Peñitas, a nature development in Valle de Bravo, a two-hour drive west of the Mexican capital, the chef is distractedly removing fungus from one of his 100 fruit trees. “It’s what I like to do with my free time,” says the Mexican chef with a smile. He acquired the site during the pandemic, built the Japanese-style residence, then set about planting local flora and helping it all thrive. “If a plant isn’t supposed to grow here,” he says, his fingernails black with soil, “then I must respect that.”

Dubbed Casa O, Olvera’s weekend residence is a long way from anywhere, marked only by a large steel “O” on a gate that even a neighbour struggled to direct us to. Here, Olvera – a man who changed the face of Mexican cuisine and put street food on the top table – seems almost anonymous. And, it turns out, that’s exactly how he likes it.

Olvera’s story began in 2000 with the opening of his debut restaurant, Pujol, in the Polanco neighbourhood of Mexico City. It would prove to be a rather revolutionary idea. He saw no reason why the street food traditionally consumed by blue-collar workers couldn’t be fused with the likes of tuna tartare, lobster ceviche and beef empanada. He was 24 years old and only just out of the Culinary Institute of America in New York but Pujol quickly became the revelation that launched his career and his hospitality firm, Casamata. “Until very recently, Mexican restaurants abroad reduced our cuisine to stereotypes,” says Olvera, his brow briefly furrowing. “Our gastronomy is often exported as fast food but in Mexico we eat healthily because we have always relied on seasonal produce found within our borders.”

Overlooking the gently swaying heather from the veranda, Olvera says that he’s still riding high from Pujol’s 25th-anniversary celebrations in May. Attendees at the dinner included the great and the good of the Mexican dining scene: Lucho Martínez of Michelin-starred Em, Diego Klein, Joaquín López-Dóriga and Gabriela Cámara of Contramar, and Edo López of Mexico City’s growing Japanese-inspired hospitality empire, who gathered in Olvera’s newly renovated space to toast his achievements. More than the star-studded guest list itself, what pleased Olvera was the way that it demonstrated how the scene had grown in the quarter-century since he started out.

The chef isn’t one to linger too long on an idea without leaping to the next. “There’s a misconception that Mexican food is expensive because in the US you pay $3 [€2.60] for an avocado,” he says pensively. “Here, the same amount will buy you a kilo because we have so many,” he says with an expansive gesture.

Olvera worked with Mexican architect and developer Javier Sánchez to build Casa O. Sánchez was a safe bet, having also designed many of Olvera’s other projects, including Pujol and mezcal bar Ticuchi. “The brief was to design a residence from which I could give back to the territory, rather than taking away from it,” says Olvera, explaining the adentro-afuera (“inside-outside”) nature of the sliding doors and wide apertures.

Brought up in Mexico City, where water rationing is common, Olvera has built a home that collects and recycles rainwater for self-sufficiency. He leads Monocle to the artificial pond where his labradors Maia and Uma, never far from his side, are lapping a little of the rainfall that has been collected. “It’s still the dry season,” says Olvera, who moves eagerly about amid the foliage and rarely sits down. “When I used to visit the area as a child, the wet season would begin in May but now it starts in June,” he adds, a cloud passing over his face as he considers the changing climate to which we’re all slowly adapting.

Is Casa O the vanity project of a wealthy chef? Olvera sees it as a long-term investment. “I built it for my children but also for my grandchildren,” he tells Monocle enthusiastically. Valle de Bravo’s climate allows him to grow tropical produce here. “We’re at the limit of the state of Michoacán,” says Olvera, pointing out his favourite tree, the floripondio, which is sprouting fragrant trumpet-shaped flowers. We might be hours from anywhere else but Olvera’s talk inevitably turns back to his obsession with plants and his restaurants. “At Cosme, we substitute the pumpkin flowers that grow here with rhubarb, which we don’t use in Mexico,” he says. “There are no good or bad ingredients.”

Olvera has trained some of Mexico’s most prominent chefs, including Jorge Vallejo of Quintonil, currently ranked seventh globally, and Gabriela López of Máximo Bistrot, a regular on Latin America’s list of its 50 best restaurants. But it’s not past successes that Olvera wants to discuss. Instead, it’s the possibility of fresh ones. “You won’t find these methods used anywhere else in the world,” he says of his famously outré flavour combinations, from coffee in mayonnaise and a mole containing 100 ingredients to the use of ants and creepy crawlies. “Eating Mexican food means being open to trying new things.”

We walk a little further and look back at the house, encircled by blackberry bushes, apple orchards and macadamia groves, as well as plum, pear and lemon trees. We see fat cucumbers, lettuce, crimson chillies, tomatoes and avocados, each crop planted according to the reserve’s sloping topography to give it the best chance of flourishing. There are two towering agave plants, one green, another brown. “The plant uses all of its energy to bloom and then it dies,” says Olvera, with the satisfaction of a botany professor eager for his student to understand his enthusiasm for the topic.

Olvera is the consummate host but it’s hard not to feel as though you were intruding on somewhere special to the chef while you’re here. “I try not to invite guests – I like to walk by myself,” he says. “I feel at peace because I can’t see or hear the neighbours.” Away from the city in which Olvera became a household name, the introverted chef prefers to spend his evenings experimenting with flavours or examining his crops.

So what does the future hold for the godfather of modern Mexican gastronomy? Olvera’s appetite for commercial success appears sated. “I don’t plan to conquer the world with Mexican food,” he says. “Every restaurateur’s dream is to be able to pay their producers fairly and to celebrate the value of the produce once it’s on the plate. If I have that, I’m content.” Right after saying this, Olvera admits a little ambition that subtly undermines his previous statement and opens up a conversation about a new hospitality project. “In a restaurant you have hours to impress your guests,” he says, his eyes lighting up. “In a hotel you have days.”
casamata.com