If Eric Werner’s name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, that of his restaurant, Hartwood, should. His was the classic pick-up-and-move dream story: In May of 2010, Werner and his wife Mya Henry went from fantasizing about leaving everything behind and starting a little restaurant on the Caribbean in Mexico, to making it a fast reality. They packed up their East Village apartment in New York City and bought a property on a patch of Tulum that was literally off the grid.

Once there, they built from scratch a restaurant on the jungle side of the beach town’s road that became, in many ways, the epicenter of a community. It wasn’t just any restaurant: They would use wood fire and solar kitchen power to cook everything, serve dishes that changed every day, and skip contemporary restaurant designs in lieu of building a place that looked like it just blended into the existing jungle—surrounded by native plants—and was open to the sky.

Lines formed. Locals and travelers flocked. And the pair released their first cookbook, the award-winning Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán, in 2015. Today, they’re still doing their Yucatan-influenced, seafood-forward cuisine—with locally inspired dishes like al pastor, vibrant ceviches, and grilled Caribbean lobster—at the restaurant. But this month, Werner and travel journalist Nils Bernstein have a new book out called The Outdoor Kitchen: Live-Fire Cooking from the Grill. Inspired by his family’s frequent retreats to the Catskill Mountains in the US, it’s a blueprint for constructing your own rustic, fire-led outdoor kitchen that blends into wherever you are. The recipes are meant to connect you with the nature—and the ingredients—you have right around you.

We caught up with the chef about his new project, and why it’s wherever he currently is that ignites him.

A lot of people dream about picking up and moving to a foreign country. What helped push you to actually do it? My wife originally brought me here, since she and her parents had been coming here [for vacation] for years. I immediately fell in love and, after a few years of figuring it all out, we decided to stay down here and start a restaurant [in Tulum] and raise a little family and begin really small. And to really explore the Yucatan.

I was really intrigued by the Mayan culture and learning a different education in a different type of farming, living, climate, and sea. It was brand new for someone who had cooked in New York for 15 years. It was definitely a leap of faith and it was unfunded and really risky, but ultimately we were in the right mindset to do that. That constant kind of excitement to explore and search out new things was in the forefront of our mind the whole time.

What surprised you about living in a resort town? You have to be the kind of person who wants to go into the interior of a place and explore and find out new things and is interested in that direction. I wasn’t coming down here for multiple vacations—I was coming down to really kind of think, “Can I live here? Can we do this?” [This place allowed me to] create my own energy through solar panels and batteries and have a complete zero waste approach and no footprint. And to cook over fire. There were many challenges in the beginning and still today. Then there were like four restaurants in the whole town and one supermarket- it was really small, very quaint and kind of coming from NYC it was a big change. Tulum has grown and has become a little bit more built up, but if you look for it it still has that same core feeling and heart.

There’s still a big impact of Mayan culture, which we’re in the heart of here. So every single farmers’ market is all coming from that land. There are expats down here who have farms but they’re all learning from the community. The core is still very deeply set in that, and you can’t not see it when you move here. Every part of Mexico has its own identity and its clearly understood when you go there what parts of identity exist. There are big difference between [nearby areas like] Oaxaca and San Miguel.