Carlos Gaytán leads Grupo Castellano’s 2026 Mexican Cuisine Festival

For the fourth year, Grupo Castellano is turning September into a celebration of Mexican cooking, with chef Carlos Gaytán leading this year’s festival.

Gaytán, the first Mexican chef to receive a Michelin star, brings dishes shaped by his career and the cooking of his mother, doña Teté. The festival takes its central inspiration from his book, Raíces de Gaytán, which was nominated for the Gourmand Awards and pays tribute to memory and resilience.

His four featured preparations come from the book’s “Cooking with Friends” chapter: Mayan ceviche, a fresh tribute to ingredients from southeastern Mexico; chicken tetela, made with native corn; crispy Pueblan molotes; and Mextrapique catch of the day, prepared using an ancestral cooking technique that wraps the food in totomoxtle.

The chefs of Grupo Castellano add their own tour through Mexico’s regions, from the Caribbean and Puebla to the north and the Veracruz coast. Their creations include textured esquites with Cotija cheese, bone marrow and brisket suadero; cochinita pibil croquettes with Xnipec sauce; blue-corn gorditas; green Caldo Xóchitl; chile en nogada; and Veracruz-style socarrat with seafood.

Other dishes include stone-smoked octopus over yellow mole, beef fillet with chicatana-ant mole, northern machaca flautas and Angus rib-eye tacos. The menu pairs these reinterpretations of traditional recipes with signature cocktails, national wines and the Spanish culinary tradition of Grupo Castellano.