Why Aqua is numero uni

I learned three things during a recent dinner with Aqua chef David Pardo de Ayala:

1) Sea urchins are like balls with spikes – almost like rambutan, except their spines are longer.

2) Sea urchins are bottom feeders that have apparently been climbing up the ladder of high cuisine in recent years.

3) And that Aqua’s desserts, which we have not tried before and have nothing to do with sea urchin, are some of the best I’ve ever tasted – and that’s the unanimous opinion of a small group of very opinionated lifestyle writers.

Aqua Restaurant at the lobby level of the Enterprise Center in Makati is having a sea urchin festival, and so off we go one fine evening two weeks ago to get a taste of what David has cooked up. The truth is, I’ve tried sea urchin only in Japanese restaurants – rolled in rice and nori – and if I saw it on some other dish, I wouldn’t know what to make of it.

But here’s another thing I found out: The taste of sea urchin roe is like riding a bike. Once you get the hang of it, you will never forget it. You can put it in a salad (even a bitter mesclun salad) or in a creamy soup, but the taste will still kick in your mouth as if saying, "Hey! There’s a sea urchin in here."

Still, even David admits that the sea urchin is an acquired taste, a little off the mainstream menu.

"True foodies have no doubt already tried sea urchin before, gotten to like it or not. I wish it were more popular, more mainstream so I could do more complex dishes. So far, it’s a specialty menu but we’ll keep it around a while longer because it’s been doing really well," he says.

Okay. So, this little ball of spikes is "not terribly well known for its continental applications," says David. "But it’s becoming popular in world cuisine. Like many other ingredients, before they were considered as pests – they were affecting the fishermen’s lobster catch or something, so people were actually paid to remove sea urchins."

While most people associate sea urchin roe with Japanese dishes, there’s so much more to this prickly pleasure. David presented a five-course meal featuring sea urchin roe (and none of them was sushi) caught in the waters of Bicol. In our previous interview with him about Soleil’s mouth-watering soft-shell-crab dishes, he mentioned that a chef’s work is creating dishes and nosing around for new ingredients and suppliers. He hit another jackpot with Bicol’s sea urchin.

"We have no idea how lucky we are to have them here," he says.

The first dish that comes out of the kitchen is raw sea urchin – ceviche with orange-labuyo marinade and baby greens. It’s like swallowing a piece of the ocean – the fresh taste assaulting your palate with the roe rolling in the mouth like it’s on a swimming pool slide.

Then comes the soup: Velouté or creamy leek and potato soup with shiitake mushrooms and sea urchin. Fellow lifestyle writer Frau, who passed up on the ceviche (she doesn’t like raw food), loves the soup.

Next comes the creamy tarragon risotto with uni and tomatoes. You can say anything bad about the Italians or say that Asian rice is the best, but when David Pardo de Ayala does risotto, the results are magnifico. I keep coming back to his soft-shell-crab risotto at Soleil; his sea urchin version is the same – creamy and very tasty.

The spaghetti with sea urchin is a light pasta dish with chili and garlic in olive oil. Unlike with ceviche, the roe here is in little bits. It’s an old Italian recipe, says David, and he reveals that the best part of this dish is the roe that sticks on the pan – like the paella crust on the bottom of the pan that you’d beat up your fellow diners to get to it first.

The last dish is the lapu-lapu with sea urchin mousseline. The mousseline is very light and fluffy, the roe invisible but you sure can taste it in the mouth. The fish fillet is pan roasted with grilled vegetables and braised mussels on the side. At this point, all you want is to make the lapu-lapu swim in this amazing sauce.

"Like many other delicacies, people react to it by either loving it or hating it, so I’m surprised at how much it has clicked here, particularly the lapu-lapu dish."

The idea of having these five dishes, according to David, is to showcase "the different facets of sea urchin" – raw, cooked in pasta, cooked in cream sauce, etc.

"Like with the soft-shell crabs, there’s a lot of theory and experimentation that went into it," he explains.

Besides, sea urchins cost a lot of money, so it doesn’t make sense to put just one sea urchin item on the menu.

"You can imagine how many pieces have to be harvested to have one pound of roe. It’s almost like saffron, with one flower they get only three stigmata," he says.

Like oyster, the sea urchin is also considered an aphrodisiac. David adds, "Some cultures believe that some food are healthful – the Japanese consider uni to be one of those foods; the nutritional breakdown is very good."

But what exactly is a sea urchin? The sea urchin belongs to the category of echinoderms called enchinoidea. The five rows of spikes are their defense against sea otters, their only known predator aside from fishermen. The spines are also used in clinging to rocks when the current is strong.

Okay, here’s the last thing I learned in doing this story: A sea urchin’s mouth is at the bottom and its ass is at the top.

You wonder how such a screwed-up creature can be so at home on a gourmet plate.

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Aqua restaurant is located at the lobby level of The Enterprise Center, Ayala Ave. corner Paseo de Roxas, Makati. It may be booked for private parties or receptions. For inquiries, call 886-5767 to 68, send fax to 886-5769, or e-mail reserve@aqua.com.ph.