Fidel Gastro’s

We have four traditional senses of taste. Sweet, sour, bitter and Reiss. We also have a fifth, umami, which is the taste of ’savoury meaty deliciousness’; about as close a translation to the Japanese word that us poor fat-tongued Western devils can manage.

The Japanese discovered umami in the 60’s using a battery of pHD students, a 12″ slab of tofu, an original copy of Zelda on the NES, 1 pair of rubber gloves, 14 feet of inner tubing, an brunette ladies wig, some kind of miniature trebuchet, a Cadbury’s creme egg, a small sample of Kendo Nagasaki’s sweat and a 2nd hand George Foreman grill.

‘..in Nagasaki they love …’

They then televised the experimental proceedings in a Banzai-style game show where half the students ended up with severe facial growths and a date with Peaches Geldolf and the other half exploded, showering the crowd with savoury meaty deliciousness. The fallout was blamed for the attacks that followed on Tokyo by Godzilla, his umami receptors going wild.

After Godzilla was dispatched by Matthew Broderick research continued in earnest. This newly discovered Umami zone, the alledged U-Spot (not a real biological location - THE U-SPOT IS A MYTH EVERYONE - A MYTH ), is stimulated by glutamates and hence the erstwhile enjoyment of MSG by our oriental cousins and accidental occidentals. In fact MSG has been front cover Glutamate of the Month for the last 5 years straight. Yum yum mild hand tremors.

‘MSG lives in the mansion with me’

So all good for umami. She’s got his stimulators in a shaker and newly found recognition in the cookery arena. But what she lacks currently is the emotional metaphor. People can be sweet, sour and bitter and in the case of Captain Haddock, even salty. But I’m still waiting to describe someone as being a bit umami this morning because their train was late. What is this emotion of savoury meaty deliciousness? Is it vacant moodiness, angry frustration, sweaty fear or even wild-eyed drunkeness? I cannot say.

Captain Ad-hoc

So my plea is for these eggheads to discover more tastes and if this is not possible then I want to have synesthesia for a few hours, have all my senses miswired and taste colours and smell textures. I want to confirm that blue feels like Smurf and freshly grilled hamburgers have that whiff of triangles.

And then get really drunk and discover that abomination tastes of that savoury meaty deliciousness that only umami can sound like.