{"id":194885,"date":"2023-06-27T09:37:24","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T07:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tapasmagazine.es\/?p=194885"},"modified":"2023-06-27T09:44:56","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T07:44:56","slug":"the-history-of-fuji-the-first-japanese-restaurant-to-open-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tapasmagazine.es\/en\/the-history-of-fuji-the-first-japanese-restaurant-to-open-in-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of Fuji, the first Japanese restaurant to open in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Click here<\/a> to read the Spanish version.<\/strong>
Before this blessed and cursed globalization that we entered at the end of the 20th century caused the current fusion and confusion of cultures, customs, fashions and flavors, there were few places on the planet where you could find flavors from worlds very different from your own. Until a few decades ago, our palates were confined to the four cardinal points of the world in which we were born. Nothing existed outside of the four known varieties of taste: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Those four divisions of taste, in addition to determining our location in the world, delimited the boundaries of our gastronomic enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before arriving at Fuji, the first Japanese restaurant opened in Spain, let’s travel back in time to the cosmopolitan port city where it was born. It was a city already open to tourism with a desire for new experiences. In the 1960s, Japanese fishing companies, with enormous activity throughout the western Atlantic, from South Africa to the Mediterranean, decided to establish their logistical bases in the strategic Port of La Luz and Las Palmas, thanks to its central location, tax benefits, solid infrastructure and political stability. It was the place where ships were repaired, work was supervised and crews rested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UNITED STATES – CIRCA 1933: The Fish-Kite No TITLE (Photo by Buyenlarge\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During the summer, up to 130 tuna boats, with their correspondingly large crews, docked in the Canarian port every month. It was a constant flow of sailors who, for three or four nights, would let themselves be carried away by what the neighborhoods had to offer. They even had their own exclusive night bars, with neon signs in Japanese that instilled a certain fear and looked like something out of a yakuza movie, and where no Spaniard dared to enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria there was a considerable colony of Japanese people living permanently, almost a thousand white-collar employees of the fishing companies. All the ingredients were therefore at hand, and all that was missing was the cook to take us to that Japanese secret they call umami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That man’s name was Tohishiko Sato. Born in Miyagi in 1942, he wanted to be a sailor but ended up in the kitchen. He cooked in the Olympic Village for the 1964 games, and an ornithological expedition took him to the Canary Islands. He liked the island capital, stayed and opened a couple of non-Japanese restaurants that did not work out well. It was then that he realized that there was no supply for his own colony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A post shared by Miguel Angel Mart\u00ednez Menendez (@fuji_las_palmas)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>