Héctor Ribeiro was born in Mozambique and arrived in Spain in 2005, specifically in Badajoz, where he worked in a Japanese restaurant with a "very peculiar" Japanese man who taught him Japanese discipline, as well as the importance of nutritional balance and self-creation in recipes.
He has just taken over the management of the Shibumi, restaurant of Japanese food in Marina Rubicón, whose menu he has renewed and is preparing surprises for the 'conejero' public. In an interview with Radio Lanzarote Onda Cero's Más de Uno Gourmet program, he recounts his adventures until arriving in Lanzarote. From "inheriting" a Japanese restaurant without recipes, to cooking for F.C. Barcelona, sharpening his own knives for left-handers, or traveling to Japan every year until thinking like a Japanese person.
- How do you get from Mozambique to Spain and to Japanese cuisine?
I arrived in Badajoz in 2005 for my partner. I love to cook but I didn't want to work in a restaurant. In Badajoz I met a very peculiar Japanese man with a restaurant that was looking for people. He told me I was going to work a lot and earn little. I needed to work, I was there for six years, it was very hard, with a lot of discipline, but I learned a lot.
One day the Japanese man left, because he was tired, he gave the restaurant to me and two other colleagues, but he didn't leave us the recipes. ‘It's many years of work, find your own way’, he told me.
- And how did you do it?
He had always told me to taste and record the flavors to reproduce them, then I understood it. I used my memory. After a year he returned to visit us and when he tasted the food he laughed.
He told me ‘you have done it better than me’. He liked my personal touch. In Japan everything is more difficult, if you want to achieve something you have to work for it, recipes are not passed around like here, you have to create something of your own, personal, in your own way.
- Since then you go to Japan every year…
Yes, to update myself with new techniques from different regions of the country. Right now I think a little like the Japanese.
Even I forge my own knives with fire and hammer. I am left-handed and Japanese knives have either right edge or left edge.
- How did you come to cook for F.C Barcelona?
I was four more years with the restaurant in Badajoz, then we separated. I went to Tortosa, in Catalonia to a restaurant that had just opened, and that was fusion, although I would call it confusion. I was six years making Japanese food.
There I met the one who ran the market stall of the FC Barcelona stadium and when there were important matches we would go to make sushi there. Afterwards, the owner invited me to work in a restaurant he was going to open in Barcelona. In three months we entered the Michelin Guide.
- And to Lanzarote?
I was getting away a bit from the kitchen and focusing on knife forging, when the proposal from Lanzarote reached me. I didn't think about it, it was a feeling, I felt like it.
- How much has Shibume's menu changed since you arrived three months ago?
Totally. The idea is a very simple menu with suggestions and then add tasting menus and local product.
I have created the new menu and now I am working with fish products and I will visit quite a few farms, to gather a lot of information about seasonal products, that I can try and also fuse with Japanese cuisine. In the end, Japanese cuisine is product.
My idea is that Shibume be for the people from here. Within a year I hope that Shibumi is talked about as a reference on the island.
- It doesn't have as many sauces as other gastronomies…
In Japanese cuisine, the perfect flavor is not sought, but rather the perfect balance, something that nourishes you, that the flavor is very natural. That is the concept of Japanese cuisine, that's why they also live so many years.
- What dish is your favorite at Shibume?
I would tell you many, for example, mackerel, which for me is an impressive fish in terms of nutrients and also flavor.
It's a fish that here is like for the poor. In Japan it's a quite valued fish, it's spectacular. Yesterday I saw the fish that had just arrived and there were some beautiful mackerel. (Laughter).
- Where is Shibume and what are its hours?
At Marina Rubicon. We open from Tuesday to Sunday all day, both for lunch and dinner. The kitchen closes at 22:30.