Our Oaxaca Gastronomad Experience

We went on a Gastronomad Experience, hosted by serious foodies and long term digital nomads, Mike and Amira Elgan. Their obsession with finding good food and wine and deeply engaging with those who produce it has led to the creation of a truly unique travel experience. Our Gastronomad Experience was to the magical town of Oaxaca, Mexico, known for its strong preservation of indigenous culture and traditions, especially culinary ones.

Their Experiences bring together a small group of people in special locations around the world to share together all of the best aspects of travelling - good food, local spirits and wine, cultural immersion, original experiences, deep human connections, humbling learning - without feeling for a single moment that you are on a group tour. But it is a tour, in the simplest sense of the word, and in none of the usual sense of the word.

The experience is highly curated, meticulously planned, purposefully designed, incredibly unique, thoughtfully executed, and unlike any travel tour you could ever find. The itinerary is also a complete secret and so each day reveals surprise after surprise. The guests therefore need to be open to having their experience entirely planned and decided for them and to eat and drink everything that is served to them; to trust that the activities and the cuisine is the best and exactly as it should be. This leads to the formation of a like-minded group of foodies who are open to experiencing whatever comes.

Amira has spent more than a decade developing relationships in special places they’ve spent much of their nomadic time, learning everything about the local culinary traditions, meeting the chefs and artisans, supporting upcoming musicians, and ultimately making life-long friends with these people. She is part of the community and gives back to those communities in many ways, not just through payment for service, but in sharing what she has learnt from other experts, supporting them to develop and grow new businesses, and always showing extraordinary awareness and gratitude for their particular skills and achievements. She makes sure to express the deepest compliments for excellent food and in return, it is clear that even the best chefs seek her well-regarded opinion in earnest.

We, therefore, as participants, benefited from the many years of her expert cultivation, experiencing in a magical moment a product that is many years in the making. Mike and Amira take you to places where they have lived nomadically and travelled for years, enabling the group to have experiences that you would never otherwise have access to. Everyday is filled with the unbelievable, unforgettable and unattainable. In their words:

“you’ll be embraced as friends and neighbors and enjoy the best and most authentic food and drinks in epic meals and magical gatherings”

Such a simple statement, however, understates how truly epic and magical the whole thing was.

We were greeted by Mike and Amira on arrival at the house where we would all be staying for the week with a glass of mezcal and a warm hug. We sat around a large table in the sun-filled dining room, chatting and drinking our mezcal, meeting others in the group as they arrived throughout the afternoon. Once everyone was there, we made our introductions, received our itinerary for the week and settled into our room before heading out for our first dinner.

The itinerary was comically vague, and deliberately so. The entire week is meticulously planned and known by Amira, but a surprise for everyone else. Our ‘run sheet’ simply told us what time to meet at the bus in the morning, what time to siesta, what time to meet back at the bus in the afternoon, and to wear ‘nice casual clothes and comfortable closed toe shoes’. And that was it. Everything else was a closely guarded secret, and it was wonderful.

Mike is a tech journalist and Dylan has been listening to him on podcasts and following him for years, so we’d known about the Gastronomad Experience for some time and had always wanted to do one. Covid had put it off for a few years, as well as the fact that the small group size necessarily means that the experiences are booked out well in advance. But hearing about their lifestyle and understanding the way they live their nomadic foodie life - a gastronomad life - made us feel confident that we could trust they would deliver an exceptionally unique experience to at least match, if not exceed, anything else we could plan.

Dinner the first night was in a private dining room of a local restaurant where the head chef and the sommelier served a six course meal with drink pairing that was designed uniquely for our group. We were greeted by the restaurant staff as friends and the connection between head chef and Amira was evident, their compassion and respect for each other as effervescent as the sparkling wine accompanying our second course.

The rest of the week’s dinners proceeded in a similar fashion - private dining experiences in beautiful settings with the best chefs in Oaxaca. The multicourse meals were always paired with matching wines and mezcal cocktails and each location surpassed the one before.

Each day we were surprised with new activities that allowed us to discover the heart of Oaxacan culture. We visited local artisans who are few of the remaining experts in the traditional methods of their particular crafts. We saw how Oaxacan cheese is made at a small farm and we visited a textile store famous for its production of woollen rugs and tapestries. Here we learnt how they turn the wool into long thin fibres on the spinning wheel, and saw the natural dye products used to transform the white wool into a rainbow of brightly coloured hues.

And we watched in awe as the master rug maker wove threads together on an enormous treadle loom, his whole body engaged in a kind of melodic dance as his feet and hands moved up and down, side to side, mechanically guiding each fibre into place with a series of foot pedals to create an intricate tapestry.

We also left the City, heading out into the agave fields to meet a local mezcalero and to see how mezcal is made.

It was amazing to be able to speak to a master distiller, whose family has been perfecting the artisanal craft of mezcal making for centuries, to see the process and to nerd out on the particularities of distilling with him.

But the best days were those where we explored the local produce market to buy ingredients that we later cooked with. We criss-crossed the enormous market in a follow-the-leader line, exploring its depths, walking among the hundreds of stalls, wondering if there was an end to the seemingly endless rows of vendors.

We followed the chefs as we bought chickens, bundles of fresh herbs, bags and bags of vegetables, piles of avocados, bouquets of fresh flowers and countless varieties of chiles to make mole.

Then, arms laden with produce, we went to beautiful locations to learn how to make traditional Oaxacan foods. Dylan was thrilled to join the chefs in making tortillas and learning how to make tetelas and memelas on the wood-fired comal.

The week had been so full of surprises, each day impossibly eclipsing the day before. On our final night, we were led to our final dining table for the week where we enjoyed a seven course meal that we had spent the day preparing. The setting was simply beautiful. Festoon lights and brightly coloured papel picado were hung in alternating rows, criss-crossing between the trees to form a rainbow canopy above a long table decorated with an elaborate floral centrepiece of vibrant flowers. Candles were lit, reflecting the sky above where twinkling stars were starting to appear.

A live band started to play, and the party began.

It was a fantastic end to an unbelievable week. No matter how much money you threw at it, you could never pay for an experience like the one that Mike and Amira have achieved through Gastronomad Experiences.

To preserve the mystery of the experience, continue scrolling for some glimpses into the magical moments, in images rather than verse: