L’encesa, Our 2022 Season With A Lot Of Light

This 2022 season we start a cycle around  the light. Only when the tunnel is completely dark, you can see the true light. Light, a vital element of the “magic” that originates in gastronomy.

L’encesa is a thousand-year-old fishing art that was practiced on the cliffs of our Marina Alta. It consisted of pointing a light source at the sea in order to attract good quality fish. Some brave countrymen, not professionally skilled in fishing, used this method risking their lives every winter night in search for a better life.

In this 2022 season, BonAmb wants to pay tribute to those “encesers”, with gastronomic experiences that take precisely the same route as they did: from the fields and orchards of the Marina Alta, to our beloved Mediterranean Sea.

The epic of these fishermen well deserves a tribute in the kitchen and also in literature. This is how we have understood it at BonAmb, including a story about the “encesers” by the writer Empar Ferrer in our menu. The author draws a parallel between the odyssey of these cliff fishermen and Homer’s “Odyssey”. His story is also inspired by Constantin Cavafy’s great poem about Ithaca. The tradition of les pesqueres and literature of Mediterranean origin (Empar Ferrer is an author from Poble Nou, the town of “encesers”) have reached haute cuisine.