Jeremiah Tower’s never-ending search for something better
Chef Jeremiah Tower, often called one of the pioneers of modern American cuisine, has lived quietly in Mérida for over a decade.
He built his reputation decades ago at Stars in San Francisco, helping shape California cuisine and, by extension, the national culinary scene. Today, settled far from his former restaurant kitchens, Tower reflects on the region’s food landscape, its markets, and the state of cooking in an age obsessed with appearances and social media.


“When I talk about American food, it was always about the wonderful ingredients,” he says, recalling the era when freshness, seasonality, and quality guided him. “It’s always been about ingredients and always will be.” Now, in Mérida, he finds himself searching for that same inspiration.
“Shopping in Mérida is not so inspiring,” he admits, with the exception of the pork and lamb he finds at the Slow Food Market on Saturdays. “I’d love to see agriculture and farming become more established in the Yucatán. I mean, there are enough pig farms around here, so there’s enough manure to build up compost. Real farming could happen, and we could see better produce.”
Tower is not one to mince words. He’s direct and occasionally blunt, especially when discussing what he sees as the modern culinary world’s shortfalls. “Instagram is the other thing that’s destroyed [cuisine],” he says. “All they can think of is what it’s going to look like on Instagram.” Appearance over taste is something he can’t accept. “You put a sprig of rosemary stuck into something—what am I supposed to do?” he asks. “Take it apart myself? That’s your job in the kitchen. The endless little microgreens on top of everything, most of which taste disgusting if you eat them by themselves, are horrible.”
For Tower, cooking remains fundamentally about technique and understanding flavor—not about elaborate plating or fleeting trends. “Can you cook an omelet?” he says, quoting his late friend Anthony Bourdain’s test of a true cook’s skill. “Stop talking, and can you cook?” He believes many young cooks today get lost in culinary showmanship, forgetting the basics. “That shouldn’t be a mystery, but it’s a rare thing now.”
His formative food experiences were rooted in the simplicity of ingredients. Tower recounts the moment as a child — captured in the documentary The Last Magnificent — when a beachcomber he encountered grilled just-caught barracuda over an open fire, realizing that cooking could be both exciting and liberating. “That was the beginning,” he says. “Being on my own on the beach, grilling fish that had just been caught — that was so fascinating. It helped that I was left on my own. It was freedom, and it was fresh.”
He’s also encountered restaurants that seem more focused on décor and social media presence than on satisfying meals. “There are places that want to be for authentic, traditional Mexican, local cuisine. It’s their version, which is fine, but don’t say that if it’s not really that.”
Still, there are moments when local flavors catch him off guard in a good way. He recalls tasting black chili paste prepared by Maya cooks in the jungle. “I thought, ‘What is that mess?’” he says. “Then I tasted it, and I thought, ‘This is world-class,’ because the flavors keep going and going and going like any great food.” The same goes for papadzules and cochinita pibil when made the traditional way. “If it’s done right, it’s extraordinary,” he says. But shortcuts mean that essential steps get lost. “People leave out what grandma used to do. Without that, you lose the depth of flavor.”
His vision for improvement in Mérida’s food scene returns to the importance of farming and quality ingredients. He imagines a range of products that could thrive if handled well, from better poultry to specialty crops. “If only someone would just do one thing really well,” Tower says, referencing a Parisian bakery that became famous for a single sublime apple tart. “That’s what I’d love to see here—just pick something and do it perfectly. People would flock to it.”
At 82 — which he says is “fantastic!” — Tower is not done thinking about the future of food. Up next is an appearance at an Ojai, California, Food + Wine Festival, where package prices start at around $4,000 per person.

Tower appears fascinated by how the dining public has changed, how restaurants have evolved, and how technology shapes what’s on the plate.
“It’s about creating something sustainable, honest, and good,” he says. “That mission never ends.”
Jeremiah Tower posts weekly at jeremiahtower.substack.com

Lee Steele is the founding director of Mérida-based Roof Cat Media S de RL de CV and has published Yucatán Magazine and other titles since 2012. He was Hearst Connecticut’s Sunday Magazine creative director and worked in New York City for various magazine publishers, including Condé Nast and Primedia, for over 20 years.