Food is a conduit for cultural exploration, an avenue to understand and appreciate our world’s diversity. Each dish becomes a vessel that carries us on a journey of flavors, textures, and aromas, serving as powerful memories of our travels, friendships, and experiences. 

This way of experiencing food coincides with the vision for our restaurant, Duna, at our upcoming home in Todos Santos, Mexico. We sat down with Diego Martínez, our Executive Chef, to learn more about his story and how it connects to the concept he created for Duna. 

Originally from Mexico City, Diego started helping his family in the kitchen from a young age, playfully peeling garlic and hot potatoes for his mother’s catering company. As time passed, a child’s chore turned into the realization of talent and passion for the world of cuisine. As he took in the hustle and bustle of the servers and kitchen during his teenage years, Diego felt a rush of adrenaline, a feeling that led him to take the final step and study Culinary Arts. 

After his studies, Diego was sent to cook at the Royal Palace of Madrid in Spain before continuing to Paris, France. He began to know the world and everything cooking offers, including flavors, cultures, languages, traditions, and people. By young adulthood, Diego was hired by a hotel group to open a Mexican restaurant in Egypt, where he experienced the biggest culture shock of his life. His appreciation for different ways of life only grew stronger, as did his professional knowledge.

Throughout his 14-year culinary journey abroad, Diego has traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Morocco, Turks and Caicos, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Tanzania, Argentina, the United States, and Grenada, with the list stretching on. Along the way, he met countless cooks and non-cooks, many of them remaining some of his closest friends. These relationships have led him to eat up their cuisines and cultures, allowing him to realize that many of us share a common love for food. 

As Executive Chef, Diego has created a vision for Duna at our home in Todos Santos that brings together several international cuisines, offering a balanced menu that speaks directly to his travels, friendships, and experiences. At the restaurant, locals and guests alike will be able to immerse themselves in a laid-back dining experience that combines unique, inspired flavors with locally sourced ingredients. 

To taste his dishes is to close your eyes and experience the Khan El-Khalili Market in Cairo, the vibrant flavors of his Indian friends’ home cooking, a typical breakfast in the Dominican Republic, the crisp crunch of a simple salad on a little island in Thailand, vegetable stew in Tanzania with his friends, a roast beef sandwich in New York City with his brother or an Argentinean ‘asado’ with his family. 

Diego expands more on the concept saying, “I want to play around with different cooking styles from around the world and achieve the same dishes you’d enjoy in far-away places, like India, Thailand, or Indonesia, but using local, sustainable products from Baja California Sur. Also, since we do not offer typical hotel dishes like burgers, I’m hoping to gently guide people outside their comfort zones and push them to try new flavors.”

At the heart of Duna’s philosophy, there is also a commitment to fostering relationships with local farmers and fishermen. By working closely with these suppliers, Diego and his team will ensure that only the freshest, high-quality ingredients find their way onto the plates of its guests. This emphasis on locally sourced produce not only supports the local economy but also minimizes the ecological footprint associated with long-distance food transportation.

Making sustainability the norm goes beyond serving local produce at the restaurant. It’s equally important to raise awareness levels around the time and effort that goes into quality food through first-hand experiences. Diego tells us, “We’ve already identified where we can take guests to experience picking and buying their own organic produce at local farms. We can also take them to choose their catch of the day to be cooked in front of them back at Duna.” 

This combination of global inspiration and regional sustainability is the secret ingredient of Duna, creating a space in Todos Santos where food can bridge divides and unite us in a universal language of taste. Diego’s concept is one of memories and experiences that can be savored, and all those who taste it will undoubtedly leave with unique stories of their own.