She looked over her shoulder at Rafa, who nodded slightly and winked. And then the dishes came, each
plato
reflecting the way food has been served in Catalonia for hundreds of years. Tomatoes slathered on peasant bread. Sliced prosciutto on a plate. Succulent anchovies, lightly peppered, in olive oil. A small mountain of
tallarines
, tiny, buttery clams that we pried from their shells with our tongues, the empty shells piling like fantastic, ancient currency.
With each dish, Ferran distinguished himself, for the act of eating was a full-on, full-contact orgy. His mouth, with its thin, quick lips and athletic tongue, worked frenetically. And at times, he didn’t just eat the food, he wore it. He took the fresh prosciutto, fine, bright prosciutto that smelled like … well, like sex … and rubbed it on his upper lip (the same as sniffing wine, he said, or eating lamb with a sprig of rosemary beneath your nose). His fingers were soon bathed in olive oil and flecked with pepper, dancing quickly from plate to plate, so quickly, in fact, that our own fingers began to dance for fear that the food would vanish.
Platos
came and went. Crustaceans arrived, various shades of orange, pink, and purple, just scooped from boiling water, with waggling antennae. Ferran picked up a prawn, one about the length of his hand, that looked like a shrunk-down lobster. Its shell was covered on the outside with small white eggs (a prawn that I would have studiously avoided altogether), and he began to lick the eggs with such ferocity that I decided I must have been missing something important and went digging for an eggs-on-shell prawn myself.
While I don’t consider myself a delicate eater, next to Ferran I felt effete as hell. Particle by particle, cell by cell, he imbibed and inhaled and ingested until particle by particle and cell by cell he seemed changed by the food itself. Even when he sipped his cold beer, it was as if he were gulping from a chalice, washing everything clean. Now he held his prawn before me, its creepy black eyes staring into mine, and asked what it looked like. Face-to-face with the prawn, I was speechless. “It’s intimidating, it’s scary, it’s prehistoric,” Ferran said for me. “But in this context, it’s normal. For generations, we’ve been eating prawns. If tomorrow someone puts a spider on the plate, then everyone’s going to say it’s crazy. But I don’t see the difference. For you to understand what the ocean is, you have to understand something that Americans would think is crazy. You have to suck this …”
He suddenly tore the head of the prawn from its carapace and held it in the space between us. “You mean the head?” I said, stating the obvious, stalling for time, processing a simple thought: I don’t think I want to eat the head. It doesn’t seem like something I want to eat.
“Yes, the head,” said Ferran. “If I can describe in one word the taste of the sea, it’s sucking the head of this prawn. At home, my parents sucked the head. I tasted it and comprehended it. Just suck it.”
He took the head, put the open end to his lips, and crushedthe shell until everything in it (brain and viscera, bits of meat and shell) had been expelled into his mouth, caramel-colored liquid dribbling down his chin. He savored it for a long moment, his eyes closed, and he seemed to have reached some kind of ecstasy. When he opened his eyes, it was my turn. I started tentatively, but there was no tentative way to crush a prawn head and suck it dry, so I just began crushing and slurping, juice running down my chin now. It was a profound and powerful taste, oddly sublime; the essence of this thing was, yes, salty, but also deeply evolved. It was cognac and candy, bitter and sweet, plankton and fruit. It seemed like the whole chemical history of the world in one bite.
“This is taste,” said Ferran. “Not
the
taste, it
is
taste. You can’t explain this.”
He went on. “In a restaurant like
plato
reflecting the way food has been served in Catalonia for hundreds of years. Tomatoes slathered on peasant bread. Sliced prosciutto on a plate. Succulent anchovies, lightly peppered, in olive oil. A small mountain of
tallarines
, tiny, buttery clams that we pried from their shells with our tongues, the empty shells piling like fantastic, ancient currency.
With each dish, Ferran distinguished himself, for the act of eating was a full-on, full-contact orgy. His mouth, with its thin, quick lips and athletic tongue, worked frenetically. And at times, he didn’t just eat the food, he wore it. He took the fresh prosciutto, fine, bright prosciutto that smelled like … well, like sex … and rubbed it on his upper lip (the same as sniffing wine, he said, or eating lamb with a sprig of rosemary beneath your nose). His fingers were soon bathed in olive oil and flecked with pepper, dancing quickly from plate to plate, so quickly, in fact, that our own fingers began to dance for fear that the food would vanish.
Platos
came and went. Crustaceans arrived, various shades of orange, pink, and purple, just scooped from boiling water, with waggling antennae. Ferran picked up a prawn, one about the length of his hand, that looked like a shrunk-down lobster. Its shell was covered on the outside with small white eggs (a prawn that I would have studiously avoided altogether), and he began to lick the eggs with such ferocity that I decided I must have been missing something important and went digging for an eggs-on-shell prawn myself.
While I don’t consider myself a delicate eater, next to Ferran I felt effete as hell. Particle by particle, cell by cell, he imbibed and inhaled and ingested until particle by particle and cell by cell he seemed changed by the food itself. Even when he sipped his cold beer, it was as if he were gulping from a chalice, washing everything clean. Now he held his prawn before me, its creepy black eyes staring into mine, and asked what it looked like. Face-to-face with the prawn, I was speechless. “It’s intimidating, it’s scary, it’s prehistoric,” Ferran said for me. “But in this context, it’s normal. For generations, we’ve been eating prawns. If tomorrow someone puts a spider on the plate, then everyone’s going to say it’s crazy. But I don’t see the difference. For you to understand what the ocean is, you have to understand something that Americans would think is crazy. You have to suck this …”
He suddenly tore the head of the prawn from its carapace and held it in the space between us. “You mean the head?” I said, stating the obvious, stalling for time, processing a simple thought: I don’t think I want to eat the head. It doesn’t seem like something I want to eat.
“Yes, the head,” said Ferran. “If I can describe in one word the taste of the sea, it’s sucking the head of this prawn. At home, my parents sucked the head. I tasted it and comprehended it. Just suck it.”
He took the head, put the open end to his lips, and crushedthe shell until everything in it (brain and viscera, bits of meat and shell) had been expelled into his mouth, caramel-colored liquid dribbling down his chin. He savored it for a long moment, his eyes closed, and he seemed to have reached some kind of ecstasy. When he opened his eyes, it was my turn. I started tentatively, but there was no tentative way to crush a prawn head and suck it dry, so I just began crushing and slurping, juice running down my chin now. It was a profound and powerful taste, oddly sublime; the essence of this thing was, yes, salty, but also deeply evolved. It was cognac and candy, bitter and sweet, plankton and fruit. It seemed like the whole chemical history of the world in one bite.
“This is taste,” said Ferran. “Not
the
taste, it
is
taste. You can’t explain this.”
He went on. “In a restaurant like
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