56 AVAUNT
CHALLENGES
Relearning
The Senses
WORDS: TOM JENKINS PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDONI EPELDE 43.26°N, 2.93°W
A motorbike accident It was sunset on a Sunday in August 2000.
21-year-old chef Josean Alija had spent
robbed chef Josean the day on the beach with friends and had
Alija of his sense of arranged to meet them later on at a small
casual restaurant up in the mountains, a few
taste and smell: here kilometers away. He was focused, fearless,
he describes the fight as all 21 year olds should be, working his
way up through the kitchens of the Guggen-
to recover them. heim Museum in his hometown of Bilbao,
the institution that was helping the Basque
city forge a new post-industrial identity as a
cultural hub. He never arrived. Overtaking
a car on a bend close to the Butrón castle
just outside Bilbao on his motorcycle, he
swerved to avoid another car and hit a tree,
breaking his hand, arm, jaw and cranium in
four places. He remembers the ride to the
hospital and arriving there, and an anxiety
that he would be standing his friends up.
Then everything went black.
Alija was in a coma for 21 days. When
he awoke from his ‘long sleep,’ as he refers
to it, his brother Angel, one of three, was
standing over him, wearing the expression
of someone who thought he might never
see his little brother regain conscious-
ness. After leaving hospital and a period of
convalescence, Alija began tentatively to
return to cooking at the Guggenheim as a
way to motivate him and to feel useful. But
something wasn’t quite right: his senses of
taste and smell were virtually non-existent.
But it would pass he told himself, he was
still recovering – he was just happy to be
back in the kitchen.
Around this time he was invited to par-
ticipate in a competition for young chefs
at the Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía, a pres-
tigious Spanish chef’s congress, which re-
markably, given all that he’d been through,
he won, testament to his talent. He thinks
he prepared around 10 dishes for the judges
– he can’t remember exactly – including
clams with squid juice and trout roe, and
candied piglet with passion fruit and roast-
ed melon. But still, he couldn’t smell or
taste them. ‘I found it difficult to find the
flavours and aromas. I had lost that fluen-
cy that I had in the kitchen. I had no con-
trol over what I was doing,’ says Alija now.
A medical review shortly afterwards con-
firmed his worst suspicions: he had largely
lost his two greatest professional tools: his
senses of taste and smell. ‘They told me ...
my face changed and I could barely speak.
My life and work were in danger. I could
only ask one question: what can I do to get
them back?’
The doctors told him to start from
scratch, relearn all the flavours and aromas
he had archived over the then two decades
or so of his life – become ‘a big child start-
ing over,’ in his words. Every meal, every
act of prep and cooking hence became an
education, ‘eat and smell, eat and smell,’
re-archiving smells, tastes and memories,
whilst still trying to maintain the pleasure
of eating. Some of these culinary index
cards would stick; others would be lost the
following day. Greasy and fatty foods, and
dairy were easier, while fruits and vegeta-
bles, tomatoes and strawberries especially,
less so. The doctors recommended he eat
with sparkling water for the really tricky
ones to help awaken part of the nose to the
aftertaste. Fish, a cornerstone of Basque
cuisine, was perhaps trickiest of all.
‘It was constant frustration,’ he says.
‘You go through different stages, stages
that you feel you have lived, but of which
you have no memories. The way to over-
come it was being true to my values and
AVAUNT 57
‘MY FACE CHANGED AND I
COULD BARELY SPEAK. MY
LIFE AND WORK WERE IN
DANGER. I COULD ONLY ASK
ONE QUESTION: WHAT CAN I
DO TO GET THEM BACK?’
dreaming that one day maybe I could cook
with freedom.’ The doctors didn’t hold out
much hope; in fact looking back, Alija sees
his determination to regain what he’d lost
as an act of non-conformism – the doctors
were content that his brain ‘worked well in
general.’ He also started doing a lot of sport,
to stay strong and healthy, and was thankful
for the support of his friends. ‘They made
me dream and allowed me to enjoy the
things that have always made me happy.
It is forgetting to remember again. I had to
build real, not artificial memories,’ he says.
It took two years, but eventually he could
look at a product and know what it smelt
and tasted like, he would know if a dish were
good or bad, without help. He jokes that he
could’ve been poisoned many times during
that two years and become ‘the victim of
his own passion.’ After a stint with legend-
ary Modernist chef Ferran Adrià at the now
closed elBulli in Catalonia, he returned to
the Guggenheim, where he now has his own
restaurant: Michelin-starred Nerua, which
currently sits at number 57 on the extend-
ed World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. There,
Alija is acclaimed for his analytical and re-
search-based approach to Basque cooking,
and the purity of his flavours: now he’s re-
discovered them, he doesn’t want to mask
them. He realises how lucky he is.
‘There are always emotional wounds, but
this horrible situation has made me more
sensitive, more consistent and has made
me focus on life and cooking in a different
way,’ he says. ‘Above all it has taught me to
have patience. It has taught me that noth-
ing is eternal and that in seconds your life
can change – to enjoy every moment and
not to complain. Though in spite of all the
learning, I would not wish it on anyone.’ ‡