What Happened When Arca Brought Tulum to Egypt's North Coast?

José Luis Hinostroza spent remarkably little time in the kitchen.

Every few minutes he emerged from behind the pass to greet another table before disappearing just as quickly towards the open fire glowing in the corner of Moga's kitchen. Throughout the day he kept dissolving into the dining room, greeting newly arrived tables before slipping back towards the fire, only to emerge a few minutes later somewhere else entirely. Eventually you stopped trying to follow him. It seemed a better use of everyone's time to let him orbit the restaurant the way he clearly preferred. It was a supple introduction to the chef and founder of Arca, the Tulum restaurant that has become one of Latin America's most sought-after reservations. For all its international acclaim, Arca has never projected distance. Hospitality has always been as central to its identity as the cooking itself. That spirit travelled well.For the opening lunch and dinner of WHEN WE EAT at Ramla by MARAKEZ, hosted at Moga, Arca settled into its temporary Mediterranean address, where it will remain until August 2, with remarkably little interest in making a fuss of food. The Mediterranean did enough atmospheric engineering already. Its breeze drifted freely through the open restaurant, whistling between tables, carrying clips of conversation towards the sea before dissolving into the sound of service. In the kitchen's crevices, an open fire remained in constant view.

“I wouldn’t say that coming to Egypt has changed my perception of the food here, if anything it has reinforced the fact that Mexico and Egypt are brothers,” Hinostroza tells Scene Eats.

Restaurants are often described through their menus when they are, in truth, remembered for entirely different reasons. It is tempting, at that point, to reach for José Luis Hinostroza's résumé. Food writing has conditioned us to do exactly that. Alinea. El Celler de Can Roca. Noma. They are the landmarks by which careers are usually measured, and they all belong to his. Yet standing inside Arca, those names feel curiously distant. They explain the discipline of the cooking, perhaps, but very little of the restaurant itself. For that, the story turns elsewhere.

It turns towards Tulum, where Hinostroza chose to stay after joining the team behind Noma's celebrated Mexico residency, resisting the gravitational pull of the culinary capitals that had shaped him. Arca emerged there not as a monument to technique, but as a restaurant willing to be edited by its surroundings. The Yucatán's producers, seasons and wood fires became part of its grammar rather than its garnish, helping to shape a restaurant that now sits at No. 22 on Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants 2025. Its reputation has never rested on novelty. It rests on the far more difficult achievement of feeling entirely convinced of its own identity.

By dinner, the beach had begun to withdraw from the restaurant. The last swimmers disappeared from the shoreline, conversations beyond Moga softened and the day's soundtrack slowly receded into the distance. The wind remained. So did the fire. Neither had changed, yet both seemed newly perceptible.

It is precisely that exchange between restaurant and place that lies at the heart of WHEN WE EAT at Ramla by MARAKEZ. Created by Flavor Republic, the same masterminds behind Cairo Food Week, Egypt's first global restaurant residency programme invites some of the world's most celebrated restaurants not merely to cook in Egypt, but to inhabit it - however briefly. Arca continues until August 2, before Kinoya arrives from August 11–15, followed by Three Brosfrom August 20–25. Reservations for all residencies can be made directly through Moga.