“Mibu. The moon on a plate”, a film trip to an inexplicable restaurant – Movies and TV – ABC Color

“Mibu. The moon on a plate” is a documentary in which theater actor Roger Zanuy goes behind the camera for the first time to try to show the essence of this gastronomic temple in Tokyo with only two tables, aware also of the task difficulty.

Joan Roca, Andoni Luis Aduriz, Massimo Bottura, José Andrés and Ferrán Adriá are some of the participants in this film about the restaurant created by the Ishida couple, which has been a source of inspiration for all of them and, even more, a before and one after.

Adriá says that he met Mibu in 2002, “when Japanese culinary art was very little known in the West.” The following year, the Ishidas traveled outside their country for the first time as guests of the Spanish chef and organized a meal at the El Bulli restaurant for which they brought absolutely everything from Japan, from the water to the tables.

“There was the big bang,” sums up José Andrés categorically. It was the origin of everything, also in another sense for Roger Zanuy, who produced for his company, Kaiseki Teatre, the theatrical show “El tigre de Yuzu. La historia de Ferran Adrià y el Mibu”, which he presented at the GREC Festival in Barcelona in 2017.

After traveling twice to Japan to visit this small restaurant in the Ginza district, he decided to embark on his debut film and enter a place that he knows that to know it “you have to feel it”. There was even a warning from Adrià when he told her of his plans: “Good luck, Mibu can’t explain it,” he told her.

The result of the adventure is an 83-minute documentary that he is presenting this Monday at the San Sebastian Film Festival together with Hiroyoshi Ishida and his wife Tomiko Ishida, who have traveled from Japan very well accompanied by clients and disciples, a delegation that exceeds the twenty people.

The couple’s work would not be understood without their deep spirituality, without their visits to temples and shrines for advice and inspiration, and without their immense respect for nature and what it offers in each season.

“When my husband had difficulty creating new dishes, he prayed in the temple and God told him that the world seems very big but it is like the palm of a hand,” the chef’s wife, who is in charge of organizing a particular system, tells EFE. of meals, which they only offer to clients who are members of the Mibu.

Now they are in a period of change, since both are 80 years old and they are going to reduce the number of working days, but not the number of diners per “session”, which is eight. It’s a plan drawn up to work until they die, they say at 100 years old and they don’t mean it as a joke.

In the same way that Mibu influenced the aforementioned chefs, Ishida opened up to other people’s cooking. Meeting Adrià led him to “break a taboo” in Japanese cuisine.

“Our food is either very hot or very cold. Adrià had a dish in which hot and cold were mixed. Trying it was a tremendous shock, as if the Earth had changed places,” says the Japanese chef who, despite to remain faithful to his creations, he introduced that change in some of his proposals.

A kitchen that can present you, as happened to those who participated in the El Bulli experience, a turnip floating in a broth, or if you look at it another way, the moon on a plate. “In Mibu you also eat thought”, comments Adrià in the film, for which he has composed the soundtrack Pep Sala, who has delved into traditional Japanese music and has incorporated instruments such as the koto and the samisen.

The director of the documentary points out that this type of proposal is something that “not everyone can understand”. “It is true that you have to want to play and stop seeing a boiled turnip in the bowl,” says Zanuy.

On this visit to San Sebastián, the Ishidas are the guests: Albert Raurich, chef of the Dos Palillos restaurant, who also appears in the film, will cook for them and will prepare a very special dinner at the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastián to emulate the experience of Mibu, the most difficult restaurant to explain that already has two heirs in Tokyo, Jisei and Daimu, both for services of six people.

“Mibu. The moon on a plate”, a film trip to an inexplicable restaurant – Movies and TV – ABC Color