A few weeks ago, a new food venture opened up in downtown Xalapa, in an area of the city near the university with a high concentration of delectable cafes frequented by youthful couples, students and artists. Whenever anything opens in this part of town, I’m excited to see what it’ll add to an already impressive culinary scene.
What I wasn’t expecting was for the cafe to predominantly — practically only — sell coconut-based beverages, snacks, treats, candles (yes candles, not candies), cooking ingredients and even housewares.
La Tierra del Coco is a boutique cafe billed as a “new tropical concept” in Veracruz’s lush capital. The owner, Mario Leal, is a local who spent the past five years studying in Mexico City, where he both embraced the big city and missed the quaint tropics of his home state.
To understand Veracruz’s place within the sprawling context of Mexico, it’s important to know that this region has evidence of the earliest human organized existence on the continent, with a civilization in the Olmec dating back to 1200 BCE. The Olmec predate the Aztecs, Mayans and Toltecs by thousands of years. Much later, in the 1500s, Veracruz is where the Spaniards initially landed when they reached modern-day Mexico, bringing their seafaring ways to Veracruz.
During the Spanish colonial period, coconuts eventually made their way to eastern Mexico by entering through both coasts of Mexico around the mid-1500s. Unlike the western edge of Mexico (whose Pacific shores brought imports from other parts of the globe), the coconuts in Veracruz hailed from West Africa via the Caribbean islands. Since then, they’ve flourished as one of the region’s prominent crops.
And yet, the ever-delicious coconut hasn’t always been given its respect and proper due. It is typically viewed as a roadside treat on the go, or perhaps it gets incorporated into a side dish to accompany a larger plate. It is rarely, if ever, the actual dish itself — let alone an entire cafe’s menu and purpose.
La Tierra de el Coco is changing that, one coconut at a time. Imagine a panadería — with its different varieties of breads in an assortment of sizes, flavors, styles, prices — but with coconuts.
There are the basic offerings: freshly poured coconut water in a ready-made to-go cup for convenience. There’s also prechopped coconut prepared daily (and iron branded by the workers across the counter with a La Tierra de el Coco logo).
Though I love coconut water as much as anyone else, it’s the other stuff that makes me giddy: 100% vegan coconut ice cream. Gratis toppings include shredded and candied coconut, dehydrated coconut strips and peanut crumbles. The scoops are gratuitously large and the prices generously low.
From there, the tiny shop provides a variety of other coconut-based goods: chile de cacahuates with coconut oil and coconut bits mixed in (the coconut flavor is subtle but adds a refreshing touch to the thick spice); coconut-wax candles ; coconut soap; coconut toothpaste; coconut bowls and spoons; coconut flour; coconut sugar; even coconut deodorant — that must smell like coconut, right?). Everything is made locally for the shop in partnership with nearby artisans, and branded as Tierra del Coco.
On a humid, steamy day in Xalapa — of which, due to climate change and dangerously rampant deforestation, there is more heat here than ever — nothing really beats strolling down the block to get a scoop of coconut ice cream and sip on cold coconut water on a breezy covered patio surrounded by greenery.
Though coconut treats remain around the city and state in other forms (mostly at the parks, where coqueros gather to chop coconuts on the spot, or along the streets, where coconut candies can occasionally be had), I haven’t seen anything quite like La Tierre de el Coco elsewhere in Mexico. Yet another reason Veracruz’s culinary offerings are worthy of more attention.
If you’re in Xalapa and you like coconut, you owe it to yourself to check this place out.
Alan Chazaro is the author of “This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album,” “Piñata Theory” and “Notes From the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge” (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His writing can be found in GQ, NPR, The Guardian, L.A. Times and more. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, he is currently based in Veracruz.
