Basque Country: a place which I knew was the home of the dreaded ETA (at least in the ’80-s I didn’t know much more). A land of continuous bomb attacks. The country- or let’s call it a region- , had a pretty bad PR or image at that time.
This changed dramatically around the turn of the millennium, as they seriously and successfully attempted at redefining themselves through gastronomy both towards the outside world and within. This – coupled with certain advantageous geographical traits – produces a scenery as if we injected Slovenia into Spain. Imagine similar winding mountain paths, large green patches of land, forests, grazing cattle, but then we soon arrive to the seaside and there awaits everything the sea can yield: the best shells, crabs, octopus, different kinds of fish. This is why everything here has a super-special taste: no matter whether we talk about pork (cerdo iberico), or beef (the famous txuleta steak), goose liver, octopus, palamos prawns, mussels or any other ingredient …here everything is extraordinary.
Thus the Basque people decided to push “foodism” forward, so they organised as many symposiums, fairs, post-graduate trainings as possible, and they built up a sizeable number of excellent chefs. Although I cannot refer to a very precise statistic: it is a well-know fact that the most numerous 3 Michelin stars restaurants in Europe (especially near San Sebastian) can be found in this small stretch of land. I had wished to visit this area for a long time, but no low cost airlines or other flights have direct connections with this place from Budapest. So we had no other choice than to drive through Madrid and up to Bilbao (only a 3,5 hour drive) where we found accommodation in a charming little town very close to Bilbao called Durango. This is the industrial hub of Basque Country mainly because of the many manufacturing plants . Why we actually came here was only 5 km-s away from Durango: a place named Asador Etxebarri.
Whether it owns a Michelin star, or not (actually it has 1) is almost irrelevant, or whether it is included in the San Pellegrino top 50 list, or not (it is ranked as the 13th) isn’t so important either.
What really counts is that the marvellous raw materials that Basque Country has to offer, appear here in the best and most puritan forms. This can almost be called minimalist cuisine.
There are the raw materials and then there is a row of charcoal-burning grills.The chef-patron, Victor Arguinzoniz -renders a different type of wood/coal for every piece of raw material and smokes or chars the food items with the use of these. He even smokes his own butter and milk. I was extremely attracted by the minimalism of this place…as we finally start to leave the complex world of molecular cuisine behind and the fanfare with multi-ingredients, textures, tastes.
We had a reservation where the sole offer of the evening was the degustation menu, -at a rather friendly price of 125 euro per person with 15 courses.
First some home made bread and butter arrived. As a matter of fact, I had never seen so many bakeries in a small town before. This reminded me of France and the French obsession with bakeries. The Basques are also pretty good at it. The butters are smoked of course, one type of butter is from goat’s milk , sprinkled with black salt, with quite an intensive goat-cheese flavour. That was the winning item for me…I spread it on a piece of crispy bread. The other one was a sweeter type, from buffalo’s milk, more creamy, more fluffy, sprinkled with almonds and honey. Both were quite special and wonderful.
This was followed by Etxebarri ‘s version of the most typical Spanish sandwich: bocadillos con chorizo or spicy sausage sandwiches. The sausage is made in-house by them and can be praised only with superlatives. A bit hot, spicy with paprika, properly fatty, melts in the mouth. And all this on a mildly toasted, home-made bread, seemingly spread with some drippings. Mmmm. We ordered another portion of this , it was so good.
Tomato salad with onions. During our Basque-tour we consumed few vegetables and this was one of those rare occasions. Tomato is smoked too, without the skin and served in olive oil. It is fantastic to taste the sweet, soft tomato flesh in the mouth. Essential.
Toast again: a snack with the most characteristic export item of Basque country: the anchovy. I would say that the intensely salty, smoky, oily anchovy is the best in this genre, that I have ever eaten. It’s not easy to describe how such a small fish can hold such a deep, strong, mineral, salty, sea flavour. The taste of anchovies grew on me over the years and now I always take a tin home from the best types. It is difficult to store them any other way than in jars or tin cans.
On the menu of Etxebarri the themes of Earth, water and fire are varied depending on the seasons and market supply. Here the season was autumnal and mushrooms popped up on the market scene as well as pumpkin. Freshly smoked, extremely thinly sliced mushroom pieces lay on a parchment-like sheet, next to them -also with strong earthy characteristics- pumpkin briquettes with pumpkin cream on top. Smoky, earthy tastes where the depth of them was so moving. The ingredients were only heated up to the extent that their tastes came out according to their best nature.
Palamos prawn. Palamos is a small town in Catalonia , where local fishermen can harvest such incredibly red prawns from the sea. These are the best prawns sold in Spain, the sign indicating their origin means a lot. You are asked to peel the two prawns, separate the head, then suck the intense sea flavour. Even the mere operation of tearing these prawns apart is so basic and primer. It was extraordinarily fresh, half smoked, half raw with sweet, bright, cracking flesh.
Next came the squid. Sauced with its own ink plus caramelized onions. Perfection. Only the best raw materials are required, and “chewy, gummy , rubbery” are phrases that are totally out of question. Grilled only to the extent required and optimal, licked by the flame only to the extent that it comes out perfect .
Back to the earth’s bounty : grilled porcini and eggplant , only slightly touched by flames. Umami. The smoky, rough, earthy tastes of the mushroom, the depth of the flavour of grilled aubergine, in its full-bodied flavour.
The next dish was slightly forgettable: a red mullet sashimi with some onion toppings. This was the whole dinner’s most mediocre course, as we felt that the fish did not get enough fire, smoke, taste and there was nothing to boost or enhance its flavours. We found it rather flat.
White tuna with pisto. This course divided our company, but I loved it. The chef strived for a perfect harmony of tastes with a not too fatty tuna piece only whitened by heat on the outer layers but still rosy on the inside. As kind of a contrast came the roasted tomato and a reduced pisto (just like Spanish Ratatouille). For me the fish was too delicate, too tender to be accompanied by a hot tomato -onion sauce, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. An interesting and recurrent thought here is how can you entice that umami taste using only a few, but strong, characteristic raw materials. This type of zen-like, minimalist cuisine is perfectly suitable for achieving this, maybe Japan has something similar.
Now came the main attraction of the evening: the txuleta. What a pity that it was left last, and unfortunately we were almost full by that time. Ohh, what a perfectly crusted and roasted specimen it was. Burnt almost black on the outside, rosy on the inside. Soft, fatty tissues —tick, moist meat—tick, salty, seared crust—tick, chew off the remains from around the bone—tick. Yes, for this meal it was definitely worth travelling so much.
Among the birthday desserts this pastry filled with cream was fabulous. It had a caramellized pastry shell and vanilla cream underneath with very thin layers of pastry. A kind of Basque millefeuille. The 4 of us made it disappear in just about 5 minutes .
Their classic dessert is burned milk ice-cream with beetroot cream. Similarly to the butter, the condensed milk also got a kind of smoked taste and the earthy, sweet beetroot proved to be a perfect partner swirled around it. A nice play with tastes and scents: earthy, creamy, sweet, smoky.
A fig was left to the very, which arrived with a custard of sorts… but i could not focus on it properly ….since there was an orgy of tastes in my mouth .
This was the one of the best, and most memorable dinners I have ever had in my life. Why San Pellegrino placed this restaurant 13th in the world ranking, in spite of the fact that it has only 1 star should be perfectly clear by now. Even after a few weeks of arriving back home, I was capable of recalling the tastes of the courses I ate there. The perfect raw material–handled as they deserve …toasted, smoked, grilled, just to the point they really require it, as long as it adds to the taste . And those unbelievable sauces , small accessories that are put on the plate only as subtle signals, but don’t distract from the main attraction-…the actual product, whether it be a mushroom, a tomato, prawn or steak. But the simpler they are, the more striking the depth of their taste becomes, their complexity in the simplicity. I think this is perfect cuisine, that is my only conclusion.
FOODPOLICE 