Os-Kuro, the new Japanese restaurant in Claris Hotel
Joaquim Clos has personally designed his dream sushi bar, with a sake cellar and robatayaki-style cooking
Derby Hotels Collection presents Os-Kuro, a Japanese restaurant that breaks expectations. Os-Kuro is a personal project of Joaquim Clos, and its aim is to offer traditional Japanese cuisine, served by a team of professionals who love and respect Japanese culture. The Os-Kuro team is a melting pot of nationalities, with a common goal: to offer pure Japanese gastronomy, faithful to tradition and with products of the highest excellence.
The name, Os-Kuro, refers to the main characteristic of the place: darkness (kuro means black in Japanese). Although with direct access from Barcelona's bustling Valencia street, the half-light upon entering is enveloping and transports the diner into an intimate, elegant and sophisticated atmosphere.
The best fish from the Spanish fish markets is displayed and worked at the bar and in front of the few privileged tables from which to contemplate the sushiman's spectacle. A spiral staircase takes diners to a second space, a restaurant designed for after-dinner enjoyment and conducive to sharing, conversation and enjoyment.
A wall covered with sakes precedes the room, after a light step through an open kitchen measured to the millimetre. There, dishes such as red prawn Yakisoba, Miso cod, Japanese Wagyu or lobster and sisho, are cooked in a perfect way and and very correctly plated.
The extreme quality of the product can be sensed in the minimalism of the fire area and its tools. Excellence in its purest form and impeccable execution is the motto of the team at the head of Os-Kuro.
The challenge of Joaquim Clos
The General Manager of Derby Hotels Collection, Joaquim Clos, has taken on the launch of Os-Kuro as the company's great challenge in the restaurant business. After an intense tour of sushi bars and Japanese restaurants around the world, as well as recurring visits to the best Japanese restaurants in Spain in general and Barcelona in particular, Clos is convinced that Barcelona deserves an establishment like Os-Kuro: purist, essential, excellent. He is directly involved in the project and supervises all the details. From the raw materials, the cooking and the presentation of the dishes on the menu.
Japanese sensibility
Michele Camolei, the F&B Director of Claris Hotel & Spa, has an intense and visceral family connection with Japan, which is why he has a deep understanding of Japanese culture with a sensitivity that only blood ties can give. Camolei comes from La Spezia, on the coast of Italy, and has lived in Asia for more than 14 years, 4 of them in Japan, where he still has part of his family. Thanks to his life journey, he has transferred to Os-Kuro his knowledge and sensitivity regarding the particular relationship that the Japanese have with food: the respect for seasonal ingredients, the veneration of rice as the basis of their gastronomy, the careful technique in the processes - preservation, fermentation, maturation - and of course the experience with their traditional recipes.
Privileged hands
The sushimen team at Os-Kuro, after years of experience in the world of sushi, is highly demanding with the rice -of the koshihikari variety-, the vinegar -black and white- and the secondary ingredients such as ponzu or negi -Japanese onion. But his talent lies in the cuts that sublimate all kinds of fish - always changing according to the catch of the day - as well as the precise execution of shellfish and bivalves.
The bar, in an aesthetic key
The team at the Os-Kuro bar is moved by Japanese culinary aesthetics, and their dishes are the perfect balance between colour, texture and umami. With shapes that invite enjoyment from the first taste, to the last bite. Just the right size, just the right amount of soya and wasabi integrated into the piece. A whole sensory festival at the service of the best fish. Sometimes raw, sometimes with a warm finish, crucial for optimal tasting.
A passion for sake
Sake is a fermented rice drink that can be aromatic -semi-sweet or semi-dry- or rustic, but the low penetration of this drink in the western world and its high level of ignorance, deserves an accompaniment to be understood as a pairing, and also to be perceived as a crucial element of the experience at Os-Kuro. A sake sommelier is the one who offers diners a taste journey based on simplicity and fun. A selection of up to 9 sake references at Os-Kuro offers a surprising opportunity to approach the universe of this fascinating and unique drink.
Controlling embers
The robatayaki - or Japanese ancestral grill - requires an exhaustive control of the ingredient as well as the cooking. The tempos, position and prior knowledge of the recipe are the keys to the Os-Kuro robata for dishes such as tempura, tonkatsu or yakisoba, completed with local ingredients such as red prawns, Iberian pork or octopus.
The best Japanese, with local touches
Joaquim Clos defines Os-Kuro as a Japanese restaurant of excellence, with the best products from here and there. The sake and wagyu - from the prefectures of Miyazaki and Kagoshima - are imported under the expert eye of Michele Camolei. The fish and seafood arrives fresh from the fish markets all over Spain, bought according to seasonality, supervised and prepared to be cut and executed with the strictest Japanese authenticity. The unmissable desserts, in which contrasts stand out, also respond to the fusion of cultures that converge in this unique establishment.
Os-Kuro was born with elegance, flavour and an evolutionary spirit in its soul. Its projection, from the beginning, is to become a great Japanese restaurant in Barcelona, just a few metres from Paseo de Gracia.
Os-Kuro – sushi bar & robata
C/ de Pau Claris, 150, 08009 Barcelona.
Reservations: 93 487 62 62.
Opening times:
Tuesday to Friday 13:30/15:30 and 20:00/22:30 (lunch menu available).
Saturday from 19:00 to 23:00.
Press contact:
DERBY HOTELS COLLECTION
933 66 88 00