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Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España: Watanabe, the sharpest knife of the most digital sushi

Takayoshi Watanabe, quite a show in his speech. / nacho gomez

Sushiman Takayoshi Watanabe has turned the art of cutting fish into a spectacle. Sushi 2.0 on the Madrid Fusion stage

If his sushi is famous, the poses for which this itamae is sweeping social networks are even more so. Serious face, arms raised and sushi in the foreground. He posts it on Instagram and Tik Tok, and has repeated it on the stage of Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España. “The world of sushi is like show business,” acknowledged Takayoshi Watanabe, the itamae of Teru Sushi in Tobata (Fukuoka Perfecture, Kyusyu, Japan), who has made an art out of it.

“My restaurant is in a rural area, a remote place where not many customers came even though we had some great ingredients. I had to attract them and the way has been through me », explained Watanabe while knife in hand demonstrating his mastery with the cut of the fish.

Third generation of Teru Sushi, Watanabe began in the world of judo but ended up being a sushiman and revolutionizing the family business that his grandparents founded 60 years ago. Joking and close, Takayoshi Watanabe assures that the secret of this change has been “using a great knife, some ‘great’ ingredients and the chef’s big eyes.” Obviously, there is something else behind. Watanabe recounted the need to have top quality ingredients and the most original possible. In this sense, the rice vinegar that he uses “is made expressly for the restaurant. It is a sake vinegar, an aged vinegar “with a fermentation smell” and that the chef uses to create his Edomae (traditional style) sushi “which when I started to see sushi I didn’t even know existed.” In the same way, “the cutting knife is also personalized” with which he ensures that he obtains clean and easy cuts of the pieces of fish.

Seeing him work is part of the experience, with a performance that, although circuslike, hides a lot of technique perfected through practice. “You have to dedicate yourself, you have to pursue your dreams despite the obstacles” Watanabe encouraged the young chefs while stating that his motto would be summed up as “without limits”. Watanabe’s communion with this edition of Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España that ended with the entire audience standing up posing as the chef while he, from the stage, took a selfie.

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