Tracee Ellis Ross may have perfected the art of travelling alone. In her new docuseries, Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross, she shows herself preparing for trips to Marrakech, Morocco; Cancún, Mexico; and Marbella, Spain.

Two things are clear. First, the woman is not a minimalist — she packs for every scenario as well as for her own comfort. And second, fashion is essential. Ross stocks multiple suitcases with shoes and clothes, many in statement colours, patterns and silhouettes, and all chosen for their ability to bring her joy.

“I am sharing my particular version of solo travel, which is not about adventure,” she explains in one episode. “It’s about how I can experience my own company in a joyful, holistic way — while still being in beautiful places and discovering new things.”

The actress, 52, first travelled alone in her 20s. She was a model in the early 1990s (which could explain the fashion fixation) and went on to star in the TV shows Girlfriends and Black-ish.

But it’s in Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross, now streaming three episodes on The Roku Channel, where she lets viewers see her as she is in real life: vulnerable yet vibrant. Sometimes Ross muses about being single, childless and occasionally lonely. Other times, she’s feeling fabulous and revelling in it.

In Marrakech, for example, she shops for rugs crafted by the Berber tribe. In Marbella, she samples artisan olive oils. In Cancún, she dons bright pink spandex for tennis — later it’s a red bikini for swimming in the rain.

That’s not to say everything goes smoothly. Downpours in Cancún mean indoor pursuits, and a raccoon raids the fruit in her room. Then en route to Marbella, Ross gets food poisoning. She’s bed-bound and eats rice cakes for supper. Phone calls to her brother and mother (singer Diana Ross) help her through.

For Ross, it’s all part of adapting to whatever life brings.

“So much of what travelling is about is, for me, not waiting for something in order to walk towards my life, in order to be in my life, in order to experience my life,” she says.

Ross then reflects on the time Oprah Winfrey called her the poster child for singledom.

“I don’t want to be that,” she explains. “I want to be the poster child for being an inhabitant in your own skin. For living in your own skin.”

He handed over a San Lucas “passport”, which included another map of the country with background about each province, and opened the suitcase to reveal an adventurous assortment of appetisers: taro root chips; a cocoa butter sphere containing agua de sapo (a drink made with sugar cane, lime and ginger); mushroom-shaped butter; and a shot of chicheme (a traditional Indigenous fermented purple corn drink).

Over the next two hours, Marenco presented a nine-course tasting menu, each dish paying homage to a different province. With each course, he added insight – from local dish nicknames to stories of how geography shaped cuisine – enriching the menu with personal and cultural context.  

I’d requested the vegetarian menu and began my journey with a punchy ceviche made with green apple and chayote – an alternative to the fish and piangua (black-shelled molluscs) dish – that represented Puntarenas, the province with the longest Pacific coastline. A crispy quinoa croquette atop a delicate coconut milk foam arrived at dusk, the sauce’s spicy, aromatic flavours inspired by Limón, Costa Rica’s Caribbean province. Cartago was depicted with a smoky potato dish – the province’s main agricultural product – topped with “ash” made from burnt onion powder, referencing its volcanic landscape. 

San Lucas opened in 2019, but the project was years in the making. Valverde consulted with multiple experts, including Alejandra Brenes, a psychologist who specialises in gastronomic consumer behaviour and the neuroscience of sensory experiences. For San Lucas, she researched how people react to different stimuli in order to curate the experience for diners and generate curiosity. “For example, temperature, the choice of plates, the way the food is placed on them, the music, the dish’s texture, it all affects our perception of flavour,” she said, describing the end result as “a small gastronomic adventure park”.

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