It doesn’t arrive in a hurry. It arrives on schedule.
That’s the first thing to understand about the 173-pound Pacific bluefin tuna that traveled from the waters off Encinitas, California to a Fort Worth dining room in late February. The fish was caught by Bluefina, a Japanese aquaculture company operating off the Southern California coast, then flown north in what the kitchen staff called, with some affection, a refrigerated coffin. It reached Dos Mares three days after harvest. That timing wasn’t incidental. Chef-owner Juan Ramon Cárdenas will tell you that bluefin peaks somewhere between day three and day seven post-catch, when the flesh relaxes and the flavor settles into something rounder and more complete. Freshness, at Dos Mares, isn’t urgency. It’s judgment. The distinction turns out to matter quite a lot.
The Spanish tradition of ronqueo is one of those culinary rituals that sounds invented until you’ve seen it performed. The name comes from the low, sonorous rasp a blade makes as it travels along the spine of a whole fish, a sound not unlike snoring, which is either poetic or alarming depending on your disposition. Before roughly 65 guests, Cárdenas and his cadre of chefs broke the bluefin into its constituent parts, belly, loin, collar, and rib, with the focused calm of someone who’s thought about a single fish for a very long time.
What followed wasn’t a show. It was closer to a demonstration, the kind a good teacher gives when they want you to understand not just the what but the why. Fatty toro became sashimi of near-custard texture. Center cuts, deep ruby and dense, became crudo dressed with citrus and olive oil, nothing more than necessary. Collars and ribs found their purpose over flame. By evening’s end, nothing remained. The entire fish had been consumed, and the room seemed to understand something it hadn’t when it sat down…