The taste that makes you say: “this is so good, I need to take another bite” Surely you have sat at the table, taken the first bite and thought:“Ugh, this is brutal… I don’t want it to end“. That “I don’t know what” that hooks you and makes you close your eyes with a smile has a name: umami.
Today we would like to tell you what umami cuisine is and why in Round 14 is a fundamental part of our way of understanding cooking.
Umami: the taste that hooks
Umami is one of the five basic tastes (like sweet, salty, sour and bitter) and literally means“tasty” in Japanese. But it’s not that simple. Umami is that flavor that rounds out a dish, that gives it body and depth, that makes a broth, a sauce or a simple slice of Iberian ham taste like glory. It is the taste of ripe tomato, cured cheese, mushrooms, miso, dashi… and those funds that are cooked for hours to get all the juice of the product. It is the taste that makes you come back for more.
Umami cooking is not about posturing
Chef Mario Céspedes “If you ask me how I would define my cuisine, I would tell you that it is umami cuisine. But beware, not because it’s a pretty word or a fad.”
It’s because, in the end, what I want is that every dish that comes out of our kitchen has that “something” that makes you really enjoy it. It’s not a strident taste. Umami is more subtle, but much more powerful.
It’s like a caress on the palate that stays with you.
At Ronda 14 we work a lot with funds, reductions, fermented and products that have that special natural flavor. Because when you combine a tiradito with a good yellow chili cream, or gyozas with a touch of anticucho, you are looking for just that: a rich, rounded flavor that asks you to repeat.
How to recognize umami? Easy: if you taste a dish and, without thinking about it, you think “oh my God, this is so good”, that’s umami. If you keep thinking about that taste for a while after eating, it’s umami.
If you feel that a dish has something that you can’t explain, but makes you smile, that’s umami. It happens with a well-made ramen, with a good pasta with aged cheese, with a grilled fish with just the right amount of salt… umami is everywhere, you just have to know how to look for it.
Umami philosophy at Ronda 14
In Round 14, we are not obsessed with rules or formalities.
What we want is for you to come, enjoy, and when you finish, think: “I want to come back”.
And for that, we work every day to achieve dishes that have that umami flavor that hooks you. It doesn’t matter if it’s an anticucho gyoza, a tiradito or a bao. The important thing is that every bite tells a story, that it has a soul, that it is an experience.
Would you like to come and try it? We are waiting for you to give you a unique experience.