Pep Guardiola’s Catalan adventure is important, possibly a bit earnest, but the proof is in the pudding
As I sit in the Pep Guardiola-financed Catalonian restaurant Tast, one of Manchester’s newest, most forward-reaching dining experiences, I ponder how, during the recent culinary wars over cultural appropriation, one country that remained curiously silent is Spain. So, while Jamaicans have been audibly irked by Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice, and the Japanese take umbrage over our cackhanded tribute to katsu, the Spanish have stayed shtum about the piles of oily patatas bravas and pil pil prawns presented along Britain’s high streets as “a real taste of Catalonia”. It’s almost as if they’ve enjoyed the 40-year self-own. “Let them eat their king edward patatas doused in ketchup and chilli flakes!” they seem to have laughed since the 70s. “Give them their chor-it-so boiled in red wine with garlic bread to dip!”
All this, however, makes it trickier for delicate, thoughtful, educational places such as Tast to tempt in large crowds in 2018. And this it will need to keep bums on seats across its capacious three floors. Tast is a high-end, imaginative, occasionally edgy “taste of the Catalan kitchen” by Paco Pérez, a chef of two Michelin-star calibre.
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