Nozomi Sushi Bar, pure umami
A plate of Joselito cured ham (let's say it clearly: the best dish in the world), a bull tataki or a cheese board; tomato from El Perelló, a campari as an aperitif or some oysters next to a sparkling wine.
Corvina ceviche, nettles from Casa Tino en la Viña or a braised salmon nigiri. Everything is flavor and pleasure. Everything is umami.
The fifth flavor whose origin must be traced to the creation of fermented foods (so common in haute cuisine today: ** Aponiente , Mugaritz or Quique Dacosta ** ), brines and garum, that mythological food so present in the discourse of so many great kitchen alchemists
It was given a name (because things do not exist until we name them) in 1908, it was the scientist Kikunae Ikeda, professor at the University of Tokyo, who named this sapid and fascinating hue somewhere between the bitter and the metallic –and whose germ has to do with glutamate–.
umami means 'tasty' and perhaps it is precisely the most sought-after flavor because its presence increases salivation —and as a consequence, a more intense perception of what was ingested—.
Perhaps that is why it is impossible for me to disassociate this elusive fifth flavor (because not everyone recognizes it) with all those things that leave you wanting more, that do not satiate or cloy and whose memory grows and grows in memory.
Those things, and people, that simply leave the faintest trace of balance and contained pleasure: It's that wonderful feeling of wanting to go back to that house. Who will sing to you is umami. True Detective is umami. Ingmar Bergman is umami, as is Milena Busquets and, of course, Quique González.
Kabuki, DiverXo, Pakta or Nerua they are, but also the hake from Alabaster, the artichokes from Juanjo in La Tasquita de Enfrente or the grilled turbot from Aitor Arregi in Elkano.
Umami is fascinating because gastronomy, so often, tends to mark borders and limit territories —however, this fifth imprint is universal and that is why it does not understand flags, because… who does not like the intensity of an unforgettable flavor?
Umami is harmony and perception, understanding that life is a little bit of the things that happen to you and a huge percentage of how you take them, learn (takes forever) that it's really all about nuance and perspective.
That's why perhaps (how well Benjamín Lara tells it in El umami de la voz ) the next sapid revolution It has nothing to do with taste buds or an unknown molecule, but with the emotions, the heart and the word.
Eusebio Poncela said in Martin Hache that “minds have to be fucked”, and that is exactly what we ask of each of our great restaurants: that our minds be fucked.
Juanjo's artichokes at La Tasquita de Enfrente