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The Michelin-starred Spanish pastry chef Jordi
Roca suffers from a rare neurological disease that affects his
voice and throat. It made him wonder: what if he totally lost
his sense of taste?
His friend, the chef Orio Blanes, has been living with dysgeusia
for two years, and that also inspired Roca to create the "The
Sense of Cocoa" experience, now a documentary.
Roca's project worked with patients with cancer and other
ailments and with a group of neuroscientists and neuro-gastronomy
experts to create a cocoa flavor that the patients experience
through their own memories.
"It was as if the dessert had a heartbeat ... the heartbeat of
the life I'm fighting for," said Susana Quevedo who was deeply
moved after eating Roca's white chocolate dessert.
Quevedo, 50, has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was one
of the seven patients who got to taste the chocolate desserts
Roca created.
The challenge faced by the chef was to help the patients
reconnect with chocolate flavors they had lost, via "other
aural, visual and tactile sensations," he said.
When the youngest participant, Marian Torres, thinks about
chocolate, she remembers her first years at school. Roca
concocted a dessert using distilled water and pencil tips and
put them alongside sounds of playtime, to help her flash back to
those moments.
"It reminded me of the joy of eating chocolate and sharing it
with my friends, which was such a simple and comforting time,"
she said.
(Reporting by Pilar Suárez and Jordi Rubio, written by Sabela
Ojea Guix; edited by Paul Day, Larry King)
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