Oct
Arzak
Posted in Basque Country | No Comments »My first three-star Michelin restaurant.
It took two attempts to get a reservation, but I was granted a table on Wednesday, September 30 at 13:30.
When I arrived on the appointed date, I was welcomed and immediately offered a tour of the space. (I had told them that I am a culinary student and requested a tour in my original reservation request. They didn’t mention it in the confirmation emails, so I didn’t know if it could happen.)
First, we went into the kitchen. While it was shiny stainless steel, state-of-the-art, I was surprised at how small it was. It was packed with a lot of cooks, many fairly young looking. I was informed that there are around 40 cooks at a time, including year-long interns.
Next, we visited the massive wine “cellar” (upstairs), the experimental kitchen, and the spice room. (Laurent Gras talks about his spice rack on his blog for L2O. I’ve seen his; while well-labeled, it is only the size of a large pantry cupboard. Arzak has the same meticulously organized system, but it takes up ten times as much space!)
Finally, we passed through the private dining room and back downstairs through the kitchen. There, I spotted Chef Juan Mari Arzak eating with a group at a family table. He watched me come down the stairs. I smiled at him and he smiled back, giving me a little nod.
Next, I was escorted into the dining room. For a brief moment, I was the only guest. Then, by twos and fours, others started arriving. There were only ten tables in the room, so it filled up quickly. The décor was silver, black, grey, and white. It felt sleek, but in an earthy-stony way. While attractive, it also felt the tiniest bit dated.
You can choose from an a la carte menu, but this was an once-in-a-lifetime experience and so the tasting menu was the only way to go. They were very kind to me, fashioning a special tasting menu by giving me a couple of either-or options and also generously including an extra course.
The meal started with two stages of amuse bouches. The first was a tender oyster, skewered over a shot glass. In the glass was a swallow of green that tasted surprisingly of orange zest. Then, an illuminated tray with four more bites arrived. Each piece was a variation of creamy seafood with a different crispy contrast.
Next, for the first course, there was fig with foie gras. The quarter-inch slices of sweet fig seemed to have been poached and then topped with the creamiest of foie gras. The rounds of foie gras were then sprinkled with sugar and bruleed. The thin candy glaze cracked into little shards when eaten and crunched in contrast to the tender fig and foie gras. Pomegranate seeds and tiny bits of orange flesh popped in my mouth.
While eating the fig, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and was stunned to see Chef Arzak standing beside me. He asked if it was good. I said “yes” and thanked him. I told him that I was an “estudiante de cocina” which means that I am a student of the kitchen. He asked where and I answered “Chicago.” He got excited and said that he was in Chicago three weeks ago. He had cooked for a dinner at Charlie Trotter’s. He then asked “Alinea?” I said that I haven’t been there yet. Searchingly, he said there was another restaurant that he really liked; he couldn’t remember the name. He said “they don’t wear whites there.” I asked if he meant Schwa. “Schwa, yes!” With that, he went on to the next table. I was very impressed that he took time to visit everyone in the room.
The lobster in the lobster salad was so tender that the meat flaked apart. Mildly bitter greens accentuated the sweetness of the meat. A smaller salad accompanied the larger one. This one had greens, tapioca balls and olive oil. It was a celebration of the oil: so rich, almost creamy, green, and fragrant of grass. In a reversal, the greens seemed to dress the olive oil instead of vice versa. Tiny bits of orange provided a little accent of acidity. Mustard seeds gave a pleasant pop.
The added crayfish course featured two crayfish: one on top of a puffy white cream and the other on a thick black paste. Despite the very different colors, these two beds tasted similar. They were extremely earthy, almost mushroomy. It turned out to be huitlacoche, a fungus which grows on corn and is a delicacy in Mexican cuisine. The plate suddenly made perfect sense. On either side of the plate was a corn cream and a few kernels of sweet yellow corn. They played perfectly with their natural counterpart of huitlacoche and with the sweet crayfish. A little steamed seaweed was also mildly sweet.
Again, there was a smaller side salad. This one consisted of a third crayfish, resting on top of delicate greens. A brush of huitlacoche was beautiful, but had dried on the bowl, so did not really add to the flavor. There was something else in that salad, something that I couldn’t see but could definitely taste. Suddenly, I realized it was cheese… unmistakably cheese… a creamy cheese, probably from cow’s milk. I asked my server what it could be. She didn’t think there was any cheese in the dish, but said that she would ask. When she returned, she said, “you have reason” and that it was brie.
I love the name of the next course: “the egg of the moment.” This particular egg looked poached, but there may have been an added element of science to its cooking. The yolk was perfectly golden, creamy and runny, while the white was marvelously solid and set. I had to really cut through the firm white in order to let the yolk flow. The egg was served with toasted breadcrumbs, sesame seeds that had been coated in silver leaf, pistachio, a tiny bit of tomato, and a bitter cacao. While I enjoyed the preparation of the egg, this was not my favorite dish. The extreme bitterness of the cacao overwhelmed all of the other flavors. It is interesting that Chef Arzak had mentioned a liking for Schwa in Chicago. When I ate at Schwa last summer, there were several dishes that incorporated bitter cacao and, in each, I felt that the bitterness was unbalanced and unpleasant.
The fish course consisted of tuna belly with a light cucumber sauce, accompanied by a single caramelized baby onion. The tuna actually felt silky in my mouth. It was juicy, prepared with a sweet marinade of dried fruits, the tuna’s skin, and olive oil. The two pieces of tuna were skewered together with a piece from the fish’s fin. It had little taste, but was incredibly crunchy. The caramelized onion, when I closed my eyes, tasted exactly like the candy.
I chose lamb for the meat course. The meat itself was perfectly rare. Its flavor was accentuated by two sauces: a jus from the lamb, which was poured over a light chive sauce. Tender diced carrot and sweet seaweed biscuits completed the main plate. On the side, there was a simple salad with greens, corn, and the lamb’s incredibly tender sweetbreads.
The first dessert course was definitely my favorite. An herbaceous basil ice cream melted into a chilled strawberry soup. Chocolate balls looked like purple plums. Some were soft, while some had a surprise hard chocolate center.
I wasn’t as crazy about the second dessert. A tart bubbling tea of orange zest and chive was poured over a firm peach half. In a side bowl, there was an overly candy-like tutti-frutti sorbet, which didn’t do anything to improve the peach.
The meal ended with a plate of chocolates. My favorite was the chocolate wrapped in what looked like a piece of plastic, but tasted like crisped corn.
After my three hour lunch, I felt like I was glowing as I walked back towards the center of San Sebastian. I must have been; a random Spaniard stopped me in the street and invited me to coffee in the plaza!
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