Yakiniku

For us, Barcelona residents of 2023, it is so common to order sushi for dinner that it seems unbelievable that the city's first Japanese restaurant did not open its doors until 1977 or 1978, depending on the sources. In this liquid Barcelona, where everything seems ephemeral, it is also hard to believe that, forty-five years later, both Yamadori and Tokyo Sushi, the two establishments that claim to be the city's pioneers, are still operating in their original location.

In that Barcelona that was beginning to shake off forty years of Francoism, sushi, sashimi, maki or uramaki were exotic delicacies that only novelty lovers and, of course, Japanese residents in the Catalan capital dared to try. However, little by little, the first Japanese restaurants began to introduce Barcelonians to new flavors and textures. A different way of cooking, serving, and eating fish, rice, or vegetables.

During the following two decades, Japanese restaurants stopped being only for expatriates and smart people who had just returned from a trip to Japan. In fact, they became the place to be, especially among Barcelona's beautiful people. On weekends, those from the Upper Diagonal and high-ranking government officials filled the tables of Yashima (Josep Tarradellas, 145) and Shunka (Sagristans, 5). It didn't matter that eating with chopsticks was a torment and raw fish meant nothing to them. No matter how much they secretly longed for a good seafood platter from Botafumeiro, they knew that the height of sophistication was to reserve a table in one of those minimalist restaurants and dip pieces of salmon and red tuna in soy sauce, which, by the way, they would pay for at a golden price.

Since then, the popularization of sushi has been unstoppable. Very clever Chinese entrepreneurs have opened countless Japanese restaurants within reach of all budgets and have contributed to making sushi and all its variants one of the favorite dishes for home consumption. "I can't be bothered to cook, shall we order Japanese?", sounds familiar, right?

Surely you are also familiar with the kilometer-long queues of hipsters at the doors of Ramen-ya-hiro (Girona, 164). An hour or more of waiting to taste a bowl full of intensely flavored broth made from meat, miso and soy sauce, with long, thick noodles and accompaniments such as pork, nori seaweed or hard-boiled egg. Since its arrival in Barcelona, about fifteen years ago, ramen has quickly gained followers among us. Surely because it has landed in a much more open and cosmopolitan city than that Barcelona of the late seventies and because it is a much more affordable dish than quality sushi.

The latest gastronomic trend from Japan is yakiniku or Japanese barbecue. A gastronomic experience that has a lot of ritual, in fact, like everything that comes to us from Japan. Each table has its own grill so that the diner can cook top quality meat (Wagyu, Kobe, Angus) at the moment. Ah-Un (Balmes, 55) has quickly made a name for itself in the city's gastronomic offer and has just opened a second establishment in Mallorca, 182. Recently, Yamato BBQ (Valencia, 450) has also opened its doors where, by the way, I celebrated my forty-fifth birthday, the same number of years that sushi arrived in the city.