Steel City Alchemy: Where You Can Taste The Possible
Monterrey. A city of steel and concrete rising from the desert like some fever dream of progress. But I'm not here for the usual stuff - not the cabrito, not the industrial heritage, not even the craft beer scene. No, I'm here because something else is cooking in this town. The real thing - raw, unfiltered, and being built by hands too young to know they're supposed to wait their turn.
At El Lindero, where the cecina is perfect and the Chamochelas - a bastard child of chamoy, granadina, and beer that has no right to taste this good - flow like water, I meet the crew of Clubes de Ciencias Mexico. Ari, Alejandro, and Ilse. No fancy offices, no assigned parking, just pure, undiluted determination. The kind that makes comfortable people uncomfortable. They're not asking for permission to change the face of STEM education; they're doing it. Their mission? Get young boys and girls into science. Not as tokens, but as the leaders they were always meant to be.
Alejandro, Ilse, Tito, and Ari.
The night deepens at Vini The Bar, through a door that looks like nothing in a neighborhood that looks like nowhere. Inside, this time-warped patio somehow teleports me straight back to my hometown in Buenos Aires. Here, between drinks and dreams, the real stories emerge - of struggle, of determination, of cracking open doors that others want kept shut.
Vini the Bar main room and nearby Street mural.
Next day, nursing what I'll charitably call a "cultural hangover," Ari conjures more brain libations. she guides me through Monterrey's soul. At Botanero Moritas, my chicharron ribeye arrives like meat-based redemption, while her flautas stand like edible architecture. Crowned with crema and aguacate sauce, it's the kind of plate that demands not just to be tasted, but remembered. I proudly report I successfully fought the urge to tell our mesero to name this dish 'Chichen Itza.'
We walk it off along Paseo Santa Lucia, two kilometers of artificial river that shouldn't work but somehow does - poetry in concrete and water leading to Fundidora Park, the city's green lung.
A young girl poses for her quinceañera picture at the Palacio de Gobierno.
But it's at Tecnológico de Monterrey where things get beautifully insane. Since 1943, they've been collecting patents like some people collect bad decisions. In their new Expedition Building, Distinguished Professor Doctor Mario Moisés Alvarez and Doctora Grisell Trujillo - a real husband and wife team - are running the kind of lab that makes you believe in the future again. Doctor Alvarez, who's also CEO of FORMA Foods, because revolutionizing science isn't enough of a day job, showed me something that stopped me cold: they're 3D printing meat here.
campus view from the new expedition building.
Coming from Argentina, where we practically worship at the altar of beef, I approached this with healthy skepticism. But what they're doing isn't just science - it's alchemy. Their creations are already showing up in Michelin-starred restaurants, and for once, the hype might be justified. These scientists aren't trying to replace tradition; they're trying to save it by reinventing it.
Doctor Mario Alvarez and Alejandro with the latest version of Forma Foods meat 3d Printer.
The whole building hums with beautiful possibility - every corridor a neural pathway, every room a synapse firing ideas across the void between what is, could be, and will be. Students move through the space like they own it, because in a way, they do. This is their future they're building, one experiment at a time.
Between the street-level dreams and the high-tech breakthroughs, between perfect cecina and printed protein, there's a revolution stewing in Monterrey. It's being led by people who don't make headlines - young scientists fighting budget cuts with pure determination, world-class researchers working miracles alongside students who believe they can change the world because nobody told them they couldn't.
That's why Rising United's Hera Rising Mission matters. Because somewhere out there, young minds are wondering if there's a place for them in science. There is. And it might just be here in Monterrey, where we're learning that when we ride united, we rise united Even if it means eating meat that came from a printer.
Want to be part of this revolution? Hit the Donate tab above and support the Riding United Mission. Help us build a future where science knows no gender, and innovation knows no bounds.
