Art Libreria’s vegan cheese workshop: cooking rajas con queso in San Cristóbal de las Casas

San Cristóbal de las Casas has its own tempo: slow in the mornings, sharper at noon, softened again by dusk. Art Libreria lives within that tempo, not as a restaurant in the usual sense, but as a kind of small commons. You feel it before you understand it. The walls, layered with local art and Zapatista imagery, tell you the place has a political pulse long before the food arrives. The kitchen doesn’t hide from this; it leans into it, openly and insistently.

Gerardo, its founder and head chef, moves through the room as someone whose work is not separate from his values. He cooks, yes, but he also teaches, listens, and occasionally pauses a conversation to talk about water rights or organic agriculture as if these were ingredients too, essential and non-negotiable, shaping the taste of the place as much as poblano or almond.

This is what drew us back. Not only the dishes (though the dishes held us firmly), but the sense that every plate was part of a broader ecosystem, one that refused the idea that food can ever be divorced from land, labor, or politics.

The restaurant as a living classroom

Art Libreria doesn’t perform its ethics; it practices them. Each visit feels like a small lesson in entanglement. You notice the way the menu shifts with what’s available, how care is placed in sourcing, and how conversations in the room drift easily between cooking and the conditions that make cooking possible.

There is no pretense of neutrality here. The Zapatista undercurrents, with their calls for autonomy, dignity, and pluriversality, live quietly in the decor, the music, and the grain of the tables, as if the restaurant itself were a small node in a much larger struggle for self-determined futures.

Eating here is nourishment, but it’s also remembering: that every meal has a lineage, and that someone carried the ingredients from soil to skillet, from field to plate.

The restaurant truly has a very special energy, and it's very much apparent in the carefully curated collection of items that adorn its shelves.

Why we wanted to learn from Gerardo

After enough meals, curiosity takes root. Not the superficial curiosity of how to replicate a dish, but the deeper curiosity of how a place like this is held together: what decisions, what refusals, and what insistences shape its everyday life.

So we signed up for his vegan cooking class. We wanted to be in the room where the work happens, to stand near the stove, smell the poblano blistering, and watch how Gerardo treats each ingredient as if it carries its own story.

Having eaten at Art Libreria a number of times, we really wanted to see the magic behind our favorite dishes.

Rajas con queso: a lesson in texture and tending

The dish we were most excited for, the one that became the spine of the day, was the vegan rajas con queso.

All of Gerardo's ingredients come from local organic farmers, adding to the integrity of the dish.

It began with poblano peppers. We held them over an open flame until the skins blackened, blistered, and peeled back. There was something almost ritualistic about it: the slow rotation, the patience it demanded, the way the kitchen grew fragrant with char.

Then the queso. Not the kind that relies on processed shortcuts, but one made from almonds, tomatoes, onion, sea salt, turmeric, and paprika. Everything blended into a broth that felt warm, ruddy, and surprisingly alive, a kind of liquid memory. A reminder that vegan cooking need not mimic dairy to be whole; it can be its own thing entirely, proud and rooted.

Gerardo had us add slices of zucchini, broccoli, and corn, which all softened and took on the flavor of the broth. The steam curled upward, the smell deepened, and the room felt briefly suspended in that small moment of creation.

What struck us wasn’t the complexity of the dish, but the care for the ingredients, care for the process, care for the land from which all of it came.

Other dishes, other rhythms

We made more than rajas. Gerardo led us through other vegan preparations, each one an echo of his wider philosophy: food as relationship. The class wasn’t about perfecting a recipe so much as honoring plants.

A handful of tomatoes, a knife with a well-earned patina, a pot that has known years of use. Everything in the kitchen carried a sense of history and humility. The kind that reminds you that good cooking is less about mastery and more about noticing.

The quiet politics of a kitchen

Somewhere between slicing and simmering, Gerardo began speaking about water. About scarcity, about stewardship, about the politics that determine who gets clean water and who doesn’t.

He talked about agriculture too, about why organic practices matter in Chiapas, and about how soil health is inseparable from community health.

In a world where restaurants often hide the labor conditions behind the scenes, Art Libreria does the opposite. It foregrounds the systems that make food possible and refuses to pretend that cuisine is ever apolitical.

This is what made the class feel so alive: the sense that we were not only learning to cook, but learning to see.

A space held with intention

It’s easy to romanticize a place like this. But Gerardo’s space isn’t romantic. It’s real. Worn where it needs to be, reorganized when necessary, and full of laughter one moment and deep conversation the next.

The walls hold layers of community memory. The shelves lean with books and jars and objects that feel like remnants of past meals, past gatherings, and past experiments.

There is beauty in that: a beauty that resists polish and welcomes you as you are.

What lingers

We left the class with recipes, yes, but those were the least of what we carried. What stayed with us was the energy of the space. The way the room seemed to widen when people cooked together. The way Gerardo moved with ease between teacher, storyteller, activist, and host.

We carried the taste of the queso broth long after, its subtle spice and warmth lingering like an echo. We carried the memory of peppers held over flame. We carried the conversations about water, land, and local autonomy.

But more than anything, we carried a renewed sense of relationship to food, to place, to the quiet politics of everyday nourishment.

If you'd like to book the cooking class or simply eat at the restaurant, you'll need to visit Art Libreria in person. Please say hello to Gerardo for us!