Spanish innovation done right: A trip to Nakeima
Culinary adventures at one of Madrid’s most popular Asian fusion restaurants
As you may or may not have noticed, this week’s edition of Come como Kiki is a day late. Personally, I hate being late and do everything I can to avoid it (this is a tricky personality trait to have in Spain, a country where the concept of “on time” is much more fluid than in the US). However, this time the delay is for a good reason: yesterday was David’s and my anniversary, and we managed to snag a table at the famed fusion eatery Nakeima.
I spend a lot of time talking about more traditional food and culinary customs in this newsletter, but Madrid actually has a delightful mix of both long-established places as well as trendy spots that wouldn’t be out of place in New York or Tokyo. That’s one of the great things about living in Madrid; you can start the day eating churros and chocolate in San Ginés and end the night with a smoking egg-shaped cocktail at Dabiz Munoz’s StreetXO.
Nakeima leans more avant-garde, but maintains one foot firmly in traditional Spanish cuisine. Established back in 2013, it is one of the most famous Asian fusion restaurants in Madrid. It calls itself a dumpling bar, and while there are plenty of dumplings to go around (we ate seven different kinds), Nakeima’s Instagram bio of “FREESTYLE ASIAN FOOD !!!” is a more apt description.
As always, there’s a story behind our visit. Like I mentioned above, this week was David’s and my anniversary, and part of our celebration always includes food (naturally). Earlier in the week, David told me that he had a surprise planned for Wednesday, and that we needed to be ready to leave by noon. He also told me to think of a backup place to eat lunch, since he wasn’t sure “if these guys will feed us or not.”
In the US, noon is a common and acceptable time for eating lunch. In Spain, people are usually just finishing their coffee and suizo1 as part of their morning work break. I’m exaggerating (although Spaniards who work in an office do often take a coffee break around 10:30am or so), but as I’ve mentioned before, lunch is eaten much later in Spain, usually around 2:30-3:00pm. This fact combined with David’s comment about being unsure if we could eat made me think that we were doing some sort of class or activity and that lunch would come after. On the metro ride to our secret destination, I finally broke down and asked if our plan included food. When David said yes, I assumed we were going to brunch due to the hour.
Imagine my surprise (and delight!) when we arrived in front of Nakeima around 12:45pm. Why were we there so early, and why did David say we needed a backup food plan? He explained that while lunch service starts at 2:00pm, the restaurant doesn’t take reservations, and there is a maximum aforo2 of 15 people. As a result, patrons have to wait to be added to THE LIST (literally what is written at the top of the paper) and Nakeima starts taking names at 1:30pm. As you’ve probably noticed, we had to get to the restaurant around an hour and fifteen minutes early to guarantee being seated on a random Wednesday afternoon. This demonstrates a very important fact: Nakeima may be almost 10 years old, but it continues to draw a crowd as if it had just opened last week.
Now that you know why we were there and why we were excited, let’s talk about what we ate. At Nakeima there is more or less a set menu: they keep offering you different plates and you basically tell them when you’ve had enough. If you count all of the different nigiri and dumplings (sometimes two different nigiri or dumplings would come in the same “course”), we had 20 (!!!) different dishes:3
Daikon salad with octopus paste
Truffled egg yolk foam with smoked eel and white asparagus sorbet
Sopa laksa, which was a coconut milk soup containing oysters escabechadas, sour apple, and tapioca
Amberjack nigiri with white soy sauce and lime
Rubia gallega nigiri with an emulsion of soy and its own grasa4
Squid sashimi dressed with olive oil and lemon, served with a squid ink sauce and drops of yuzu
Garlic shrimp nigiri
Iberian panceta nigiri topped with fresh finely diced tomato
Temaki with fried gambas de cristal5, mayonnaise, chives, and fried quail egg
Edamame cooked in dashi broth with torched egg yolk and tuna morcilla6
Shrimp ningyo yaki with shrimp sashimi and shichimi togarashi
Grilled pig ear takoyaki topped with katsuobushi
Bacon miso soup with quail egg and ropa vieja7 dumpling
Shiitake foam and mushroom carpaccio on top of a souffléd corn dough
Beef and pepper dumpling with grated cured pig tongue
Pig cheek dumpling with caramelized brandy soy sauce
Bao al pastor8 with pineapple habanero sauce
Beef and pepper dumpling with grated pig tongue. Sounds weird; tastes out of this world
At this point, our waiter and now pal Carlos asked if we wanted to continue or not. We had the choice of tapping out (never!), selecting individual dishes from the remaining menu, or going for all three pending plates. A por ello!9 we decided, and we went for all three. Those consisted of:
Fried Japanese eggplant glazed with a black pepper sauce, wild hare, and fish roe
Panceta “bocadillo” made with a fried bao and topped with hoisin sauce and sliced scallion
“Dry” Ramen (aka no broth) with shiitake and bone marrow, dressed with ginger alioli, scallions, katsuobushi, strips of nori, shichimi, tempura flakes, and egg yolk
Japanese eggplant and wild hare: a favorite
To me, Nakeima is successful at a much-attempted but hard-to-execute culinary feat: mixing tradition and innovation. There were so many nods to traditional Spanish cuisine throughout our meal: white asparagus, morcilla, pig ear, and ropa vieja to name a few. What Nakeima does is take these classic foods and completely transform them into something new. Not only does this take an immense amount of talent, but it also shows a true understanding and command of food innovation. I know I talk about paella a lot, but I can’t help but think of all of the attempts to “modernize” the rice dish by just adding unconventional ingredients or serving it in a different form (I’m looking at you, paella tartare). That’s not the same thing as transforming what is traditionally served as a pickled vegetable (white asparagus) into a sorbet, or convincing someone who as a child wouldn’t even eat ham to happily down pig tongue as a garnish (yep, that’s me).
In case you’re interested in knowing our favorite dishes, the shrimp temaki, pig ear takoyaki, bacon miso soup, and Japanese eggplant with wild hare topped our list. With that said, all of the dumplings were outstanding, the coconut milk soup with tapioca was super fun, and you could taste the care put into each of the hand-rolled nigiri (we actually watched owner Gonzalo make them; a perk of sitting at the bar). And even though we were stuffed long before our final dish of ramen, the noodles were so delicious we basically licked the bowl clean.
For anyone in Madrid, Nakeima is certainly worth the wait. Even if you’ve been, repeat visits are encouraged since the menu is always changing: the guy sitting beside us at the bar told us he had been eight times! For my friends outside of the city, may I suggest a few less common traditional dishes to scope out the next time you’re able to check out a Spanish restaurant where you live? Ones you may keep an eye out for that inspired our lunch at Nakeima include garlic shrimp (gambas al ajillo), squid in its ink (calamares en su tinto), ropa vieja, and rabbit (conejo) or hare (liebre).
Some parting notes:
Despite today’s newsletter being a day late, this week’s Friday Favorites newsletter will go out on schedule! Stop back by tomorrow to see what made the list.
If you’re interested in talking more about culinary tradition vs. innovation, you can join our current Sunday Sobremesa and add your thoughts in the comments. The sobremesa posts are always open, so feel free to take a look at past discussions and jump in.
Speaking of sobremesas, you guys voted to keep the schedule of holding one every other week, which means a new topic will be posted this Sunday. A special thank you to everyone who voted in the poll!
Before we get to Sunday, though, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on today’s newsletter! Have you ever been to a fusion restaurant? What’s your favorite type of fusion cuisine? Do you have questions about any of the dishes we ate, about Nakeima in general, or about the Spanish foods I mentioned? Let me know in the comments below!
Nos vemos mañana10!
Ki
Suizo: As in bollo suizo, which is a traditional Spanish pastry similar to a brioche bun topped with sugar
Aforo: Amount of people allowed in a space
On all of the dishes we ate: As I mentioned, Nakeima is Asian fusion, so a lot of the dishes have Asian names. In the interest of not filling this entire post with hyperlinks and footnotes, I haven’t linked explanations to these words, but if you’re unfamiliar with the terms you can easily find them if you do a quick online search.
Grasa: grease/fat
Gambas de cristal: A crustacean that looks like tiny white shrimp but is actually its own species. Read more here (in Spanish, but it also has a picture).
Morcilla: A type of traditional sausage usually made from pig. You can read a brief primer here (this one is in English).
Ropa vieja: Literally “old clothes,” it’s a name for a dish made with the leftover meat from making cocido.
Al pastor: As in tacos al pastor, a popular Mexican dish
A por ello: Let’s go for it
Nos vemos mañana: See you tomorrow
Happy anniversary!
I'm so happy you recorded what you ate and that you didn't tap out.