The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food (35 page)

“As the tuna flood into the Strait—well, they don’t so much flood as sort of trickle these days—some of them swim closer to the shore. That’s when they enter the nets, which are placed in the water from the middle of May until sometime in June or July, depending on the quotas and the weather and the number of tunas. They move into successively smaller nets, until they reach the last chamber, roughly the size of a football field. And that’s when the
levantá
[literally the raising or lifting up—and not to be confused with
levante
] begins.”

The mesh holes of the nets are large enough to allow smaller tuna, the ones that haven’t reached maturity, to escape and forge on to the Mediterranean, where they continue their life cycle.

A waiter arrived with raw, thinly sliced bluefin tuna belly, perplexingly served with chopsticks, soy sauce, and wasabi. For a restaurant specializing in classic southern Spanish cuisine, it seemed incongruous. I hadn’t cooked bluefin (or eaten it) since that fateful day I prepared it for Caroline Bates. The memory, and all that I’d learned over the past few years, didn’t make me especially hungry. I allowed myself the thought of not touching it, but then what was I doing at a restaurant devoted to bluefin tuna?

Miguel, apparently free of guilt, had nearly finished by the time I picked up my chopsticks. “I like this very much,” he said between bites. “The wasabi reminds me of the Indian food I had in Tanzania. I like it!”

If there was anything disconcerting about watching a champion of sustainability tear into the
toro
, I didn’t get far forming the thought. The chef of El Campero, Pepe Melero, suddenly appeared at our table. Pepe was short
and stocky, with a round, weather-beaten face. His outsize mustache was exaggerated by small, recessed eyes that darted around as we introduced ourselves. “Ángel asked that I prepare a little tasting menu of tuna,” he said shyly. Miguel smiled, nodding approval.

I asked about the Japanese influence, pointing to the pool of soy sauce on my plate. Pepe explained that the Japanese arrived in Barbate and the surrounding towns about thirty years ago as bluefin in the Sea of Japan became harder to find. Impressed by the quality of the
almadraba
tuna, which they began buying in large numbers, Japanese boats arrived to survey the scene. At the time, tuna in Spain was still mostly preserved or canned. There was no tradition of raw tuna. Sensing an opportunity, Pepe invited the boat captains’ personal chefs into his kitchen.

“They were incredible to watch,” he said, admitting that he couldn’t do much else—they spoke no Spanish, and he didn’t speak Japanese. The chefs showed him a completely new way to butcher tuna, starting with the belly. “They were so fanatical about cutting according to the fat. It changed the taste of everything.”

So did the method of killing, which for about three thousand years had been a barbaric affair: the tuna were hooked by the neck, dragged onto the boat, and violently clubbed to death. “A bloody, horrific thing,” Pepe said mournfully. The Japanese showed the Spaniards a different method that involved raising the nets, tying ropes around the tails, lifting the tuna, and plunging them into ice before slitting their throats.

“This is precisely what we do with all of our fish,” Miguel said urgently. “This is most important.” The humanity of the minimal-stress slaughter yielded significantly better-flavored tuna, which only raised the price.

“Now the death is cold and sweet. Before it was much more bloody,” Pepe said, pausing to consider the history of tuna’s last moments. “It was more spectacular, too.”

Lisa asked Pepe if the Japanese ever explained the reason for preferring the
almadraba
tuna. “Because of the fat!” he said. Then he became very
serious. “The legend is that the tuna hear a siren call from the Mediterranean at a certain point in their lives. It’s at that point that their meat is at its best—the most optimal point to eat tuna. So they go to spawn. But what brings them into the nets?” he asked, his eyes scanning each of us. He appeared delighted that no one ventured even a guess. “There’s a legend for this, too. It’s that the tuna’s fatty belly gets an itch, like a pregnant woman. They are drawn to the shallow waters to satisfy the itch. This is when they stumble into the nets.”

While Pepe shared his legend of the tuna, I impulsively dunked a slice of
toro
in the soy sauce and dropped it into my mouth. I couldn’t believe the flavor. It was richer and more intense than any tuna I had ever tasted, a fact that I noted to Pepe.

“Hmm, yes,” he said knowingly, “the
almadraba
tuna are at the peak of flavor. All of the energy goes into great intramuscular fat, producing a tuna that is at the moment of perfect flavor.” I thought of the Copper River salmon that David Bouley had exalted in his kitchen. I had always assumed the Japanese purchased from the
almadraba
because of dwindling stocks—a desperate move to satiate their world-leading appetite for tuna. But now I realized that the superior flavor must have driven the interest as well.

Pepe nodded vigorously in agreement. “Yet over the years I’ve noticed a severe reduction in the amount of fat. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Just the other day, I was standing next to one of my cooks as he prepared to sauté the neck of the tuna. He got his pan nice and hot and added a good amount of olive oil. Nothing wrong with that, right? Except I got so angry I almost kicked him out of the kitchen. It wasn’t his fault. I became a little overwhelmed because when I was his age, the
morilla
was so full of fat, you didn’t even put oil in the pan. The natural fat just poured out, more than enough to fry it. The tuna cooked itself.”

The mayor arrived. He moved quickly across the room, shaking hands, grasping an old man behind the head and kissing him on both cheeks, pointing his index finger like a gun to another. As he exchanged cheek kisses with Lisa, his hand jutted out from the side for me to shake.

“Thank you,” he said, turning to me by way of an introduction. “I know of your work. This is a big day for Barbate. Tomorrow you will help us preserve tradition. Three thousand years of tradition. I think I must fight for this, and so I do.” He motioned for us to sit back down, a pastor in command of his congregation. “Of course, if the wind doesn’t stand in your way,” he said to Lisa as he removed his coat. “How do you say in English? It’s totally fucked.”

Another waiter cleared our empty plates of
toro.
“Did you like?” the mayor asked. “Incredible, incredible, I know,” he said, without waiting for a reply. “When I was a child, there were so many tuna running at this time of year that I remember seeing the tuna washed up on shore, lined up on the beach one after the other, with huge bites taken out of their bellies. Even the sharks knew!”

The second course arrived. “
Mojama,
” the waiter said, gesturing to the plate of cured tuna loin. A well-known Spanish delicacy, the loin is salted for several days, washed, and then laid out to dry on rooftops against the blazing sun and strong breezes. Miguel reached for the thin slices. “The ham of the sea,” he said. The mayor shot Miguel an approving glance.

Examining a piece between my fingertips, I was struck by tiny, capillary-like streaks of white fat. I’d never seen them running through the loin, a traditionally lean cut. It reminded me of the
jamón ibérico
Eduardo had held up to the light, its weblike striations of fat a “perfect expression of the land.” I was devouring what had to be the perfect expression of the sea.

The mayor continued talking. “Back then, up through the 1960s, everybody lived off the tuna. There were a million workshops, places where the fish would be butchered and processed—preserved, canned, that kind of thing. The people of Barbate, we really only ate the scraps. Everything that could be preserved was sold throughout Spain. No one wanted to eat the profits! We were left with incredible cuts, though, like the
morilla
—that was always very popular. Did Pepe tell you about the
morilla
having so much fat it cooked itself?” We nodded. “He loves telling that one. I even think it’s true.”

The mayor popped out of his seat to greet two locals who had just entered the restaurant. As the plates were cleared, he sat back down, resuming where he had left off. “We were drowning in tuna, but then in the late ’60s the industry suddenly collapsed.”

“Because of depletion,” I said knowingly.

“No, because of anchovies!” he said. Again the mayor stood to greet guests, shaking the hand of an elderly man.

He sat back down, motioning for the waiter to bring more beer. “No, the people of Barbate started working with anchovies because anchovies paid better. That was then. They paid a lot better, and plus, tuna was just three months of work. It’s three months of very, very hard work. Only now, since the government is further restricting the number of days to catch, and the world is calling for an all-out ban of tuna fishing, the people here say, ‘Hey wait a minute, this is our tradition!’ It became important the day they tried to take it away.”

Tuna heart was the next course. “Eat this one,” the mayor said as his cell phone rang. “You’re going to like it very much.” The heart was glazed and sliced thinly. It tasted like a chewy fillet of beef, with a wash of sea flavor to finish.

“It’s the captain of your boat,” the mayor said, covering the phone’s receiver. “The wind is terrible.” (Lisa threw up her hands and looked at me. “What wind?” she whispered. “It’s a goddamn
breeze
.”)

The waiter returned, this time with a flight of
hueva
“lollipops” served on sticks. Lisa and Miguel couldn’t agree on the definition of
hueva
, the debate turning on whether or not they were the same thing as gonads (the sac that holds the semen). “No, no, it’s not semen. It is certainly more refined than that,” Miguel said.

The mayor covered the phone again. “Balls,” he said authoritatively.

“Please,” Miguel said with great seriousness, “we cannot make an analogy with a mammal.”

The mayor shrugged when he finally got off the phone. “It’s out of my
hands, really. They will make a decision in the morning, by ten o’clock. Pray for no wind.”

Yet another tuna course appeared: the
morilla
, which, sautéed as Chef Pepe had described, looked to be oozing with plenty of fat. “This one I’m going to eat,” the mayor said. “Because I approve of this.” The waiter brought over a plate for the mayor. “I’m in love with tuna,” the mayor said. “But I only eat tuna three months of the year. From Easter until San Juan—the longest day of the year—all I think about is tuna. After that I don’t eat it. I don’t even think about it.”

I asked if he felt bluefin would be around for his children to enjoy. He answered carefully. “Basically, this whole tuna thing isn’t a problem. The quotas are working—there have been big improvements in the stock.”

Lisa, perhaps still smarting over the possible cancellation of the
almadraba
in the morning, recited a long list of statistics about the decline of bluefin. She pressed the mayor, who fidgeted and looked around the room to see if anyone was within earshot.

“Look, we don’t want to take away anyone’s business. We’ve been doing this for three thousand years. The Japanese have been doing it for thirty years. And that’s when—so they tell us, anyway—the stocks became depleted by 90 percent.” He looked at Lisa, with an expression that begged for some common sense. “The
almadraba
is seven hundred tons of tuna per year, which is about the same number caught by a big trawler in one day. Tell me something, are we the problem?”

I asked if there were any strained feelings toward the Japanese, who now purchase almost all the
almadraba
tuna.

“The Japanese have done nothing wrong,” he said loudly. “We have a terrific partnership with the Japanese, absolutely terrific. There is no problem. Zero. I would like to set up a direct flight to Cádiz from Tokyo. They can bring their cameras and their little hats, visit the beach, and catch tunas.” He was silent for a moment as the
morilla
was cleared. “The Japanese ambassador came to Barbate a few years ago. I kissed his wife two times. She was
visibly upset. You know what? I don’t care. When they come to Spain, we do it our way. When I get invited to Japan, okay, fine, no kissing.”

As the last course was served, a small local fish roasted in its entirety, the mayor volleyed back and forth between gratitude and regret about the Japanese influence on the future of his town. His ambivalence makes sense. He’s reliant on the Japanese to buy the bluefin at the highest prices. At the same time, it’s the demand for tuna that’s decimating the stocks and killing the
almadraba
—and the mayor’s town.

“We should probably just shut down
almadraba
for a few years to recover the stocks. But if we shut it down, everyone has to shut down,” he said quietly, with a look that acknowledged the impossibility of such a thing happening. “What can we do? We just fish our fish for three months of the year.” The mayor paused and looked at me. “For three thousand years.”