A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [39]
More wine. Then more.
The women still looked fresh. I felt like I’d awakened under a collapsed building, the room beginning to tilt slightly. I was speaking Mexican-inflected kitchen Spanish, which is always a bad sign when wondering if I’m drunk or not – and the girls had only begun.
After a few more places, I finally called it a night. Somehow, we’d gotten into the tequila by now. I’d seen a chunk of hash cross the bar, there was a fresh row of shot glasses being lined up, and Nancy was looking at one of the crew’s idle cameras like she was going to use it as a blunt object. It was time to go. One seldom leaves a good impression on one’s hosts by suddenly sagging to the floor unconscious.
It’s great, sometimes, to be a chef. It’s even great, sometimes, to be a well-known chef – even if one is well known for things completely unrelated to one’s skill in the kitchen. There are perks. It’s even better when you’re with a better-known chef, a longtime resident of the community in which you’re eating, and you’re looking to get treated well in a really fine restaurant. No one gets fed better in good restaurants than other chefs. And when you’re really, really lucky, you get to sit at the chef’s table, right in the kitchen, attacking a three-star Michelin tasting menu in the best restaurant in Spain.
Which is where I was, sipping from a magnum of Krug in the kitchen of Arzak, a family-run temple of Nouvelle Basque on the outskirts of San Sebastián, the best restaurant in town, I was assured by just about everyone I’d met – which, of course, meant it was also the best restaurant in Spain, and therefore the world. I’m not going to weigh in on the ‘who’s best’ issue, but I will tell you that it was a flawless, remarkable, and uniquely Basque experience. Yes, yes, there is that other place, where they serve the seawater foam and the desserts look like Fabergé eggs, but I wasn’t going there, so I can’t offer an informed opinion, though I’m happy to sneer at it in principle.
Chef/owner Juan Mari Arzak was one of the fabled ‘Group of Ten,’ back in the heady, early days of French nouvelle cuisine. Inspired by the pioneering efforts of French chefs like Troisgros, Bocuse, Vergé, Gùrard, et al., Arzak and a few others had determined to move the traditional elements and preparations of Basque cuisine up and forward, refining it, eliminating any heaviness, redundancy, silliness, and excess. He took a much-loved, straightforward family restaurant and turned it into a cutting-edge three-star destination for serious gourmets from all over Europe, a must-see whistle-stop on every self-respecting chef’s world tour. And he did it without compromising, without ever turning his back on his roots or on Basque culinary traditions.
Luis and Juan Mari greeted one another like two old lions. The chef showed us around his immaculate white-tiled kitchen as if we were guests in his home, sitting down at the table with us while the chef de cuisine, his daughter, Elena, took charge of the cooking. Apologies to Elena – and Juan Mari – but I have to tell you, just to set the scene properly, that later, back in New York, when I raved about the meal I had at Arzak to a tableful of multistarred New York chefs (all of whom had already eaten there), they wanted to know only one thing: ‘Was Elena there? . . . Ohhhh God.’ There is nothing sexier to many male chefs than a good-looking, brilliantly talented young woman in chef whites, with grill marks and grease burns on her hands and wrists. So Elena, if you ever read this, know that thousands of miles away, a tableful of New York Times stars were moved to spontaneous expressions of puppy love by the mere mention of your name.
Elena walked us through each item of food in near-perfect English, apologizing (needlessly) for her accent. The kickoff was pumpkin ravioli with a squid-ink sauce infused with red pepper. Next, little toast points with a puree of Basque sausage and honey, a tiny cup of sheep’s-milk yogurt with foie gras