<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDo you like the gargouillou<\/em> at Bras<\/strong>? A pure vegetable dish and a benchmark dish for many. Victor\u2019s take on his vegetable dish is different. He grilled some carrots, white and red cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes, scallions, yellow squash and wild cepes (porcinis<\/em>). Overall Spain may not have Italy\u2019s variety and quality in vegetables but everything Victor included had tremendous intensity and the taste I associate with my childhood prior to the World Bank\/IMF interference in Turkish agriculture. A great dish.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow about an egg dish? Not cooked sous-vide<\/em> like the modern dishes at Arzak, French Laundry, but I guess fried. The yolk from farm egg intact, the best fries with no oil, crisp and juicy, slices of bacon and sweet and intense red peppers. A simple looking very complicated and delicious dish.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEgg Dish<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt still is the season for angulas<\/em>. Victor cooks them in a special pan that he has invented. They come with nothing. No garlic, pepper, olive oil, parsley. You just have to concentrate and pray for its unadulterated flavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAngulas<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHaving some bacalao<\/em> is a must in the Basque country. Salted and preserved bacalao is often tastier. But, if you get the chance, try the classical version at Etxebarri with Espelette<\/em> peppers. I had the same dish at Fagollaga too which was very good\u2014but this is better.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBacalao<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThey actually had taken note of our becada<\/em> request and wanted to grill it for us. But before they wanted to show the quality of their cote de boeuf<\/em>. The meat indeed was full of character: supple and flavorful and gamey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\nBut the woodcock or becada<\/em> was the piece de resistance<\/em> and the best of the 3 I have had in 3 days. Cooked rare and not dry at all, full of metallic-gamy flavor with no concession to the modern sterile taste, with a no nonsense sauce of internal organs and its own liver, paired with superb squash puree and even more interesting with caramelized crunchy quince which adds texture and wonderful contrast. Also wild cepes as a garni.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBecada<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe dessert was a fine milk pudding with dried figs and then very good macaroons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feast lasted only 5 hours, a bit short by my standards (at FL we usually start at 6 and finish at midnight) but acceptable given that their timing was perfect and nothing needed to be reheated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did not talk about wines in this posting\u2014as important for me as the food\u2014but let me say that Etxebarri has a good list. 2001 Artadi<\/strong> old vine El Pison was the best wine of the trip and it was offered at a very fair price of 93 Euro. Last year I had seen the same wine from 2000 for 250 Euro or so at La Broche<\/strong> where we have had a conceptually interesting but ultimately frustrating meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n5-6 trips in the last 7 years and we are as thrilled about the Spanish Basque country and cooking as we were in the beginning. Perhaps more so as we have finally understood well that what made this place a gastronomical mecca is more than the existence of a few internationally renowned restaurants but the prevalence of a culture, which sustains a way of life that puts a premium on community and tradition over full capitulation to the forces of globalization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6 trips in the last 7 years and we are as thrilled about the Spanish Basque country and cooking as we were in the beginning. Perhaps more so as we have finally understood well that what made this place a gastronomical mecca is more than the existence of a few internationally renowned restaurants but the prevalence of a culture, which sustains a way of life that puts a premium on community and tradition over full capitulation to the forces of globalization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[13,11,14,12,8,10,9],"ppma_author":[272],"authors":[{"term_id":272,"user_id":2,"is_guest":0,"slug":"vedatmilor","display_name":"Vedat Milor","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/1_Vedat_fiverr_A4.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/1_Vedat_fiverr_A4.jpg"},"first_name":"Vedat","last_name":"Milor","user_url":"","description":"My obsession with exquisite products and wines with character developed in tandem during my graduate studies at U.C. Berkeley. The food at the International House, Berkeley was beyond belief for somebody born in Turkey who was accustomed to fine home cooking. Chez Panisse came to my rescue and was an eye opener for me in the sense that I had never thought that one could eat great food in restaurants. (Even to this day, the best of the Turkish cuisine can only be experienced in households.) At about the same time, I also discovered the taste of decent, affordable French wines at Kermit Lynch. Next I was rewarded a nine months fellowship in France intended for Ph.D. research. Yet, in practice, I primarily studied how to wine and dine at the Michelin starred restaurants, including 30 or so meals at the best restaurant of the time, Robuchon\u2019s Jamin (when there still was a 140 FF lunch menu, equivalent to about 15 USD given the exchange rate in the 1980s). The rest is history. In 2004, while working at Georgia Tech as an associate professor, Mikael Jonsson and I started Gastroville and laid out criteria for restaurant evaluations. We parted ways in 2009 when he decided to devote himself to Hedone in London. I launched Gastromondiale and transferred the articles I had written to this website. Gastromondiale is now on its way of becoming truly \u201cmondiale\u201d (global) through the addition of three more editors and several contributors."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7934,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/7934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}