from Bath to Barcelona… and more

Osteria Francescana September 2013

 

The narrow streets and cobbled alleys of Modena. You can wander them for hours. Most days we ended up at the market, snooping for parmigiano, balsamico, prosciutto and pasta.

But this was our final destination, the reason we were in Modena....

 

Osteria Francescana needs little further introduction. Nor does Chef Massimo Bottura — or his remarkable cuisine. It all starts here…

 

We were there in early September (2013), shortly after Massimo and his team reopened after their summer break. It was our first visit: to say we were excited to be there was an understatement.

 

Of course we went for the Sensations menu. a) because we wanted to try as many dishes as possible; and b) we love giving chefs (well, chefs we trust) carte blanche, without knowing what we are going to be served.

This is the visual record of how the meal unfolded. I'll add captions later on. But really the images speak for themselves.

• To open, a refreshing savoury almond granita seasoned with capers, coffee cream and bergamot confit…

 

…together with a couple of macarons (also savoury, of course)…

 

 

• Baccalà mare nostrum: salt cod filet in a broth of Verdute olive and tomato, served with a dried tomato pesto, Noto almonds and fragrances of Pantelleria.

 

• How to burn sardines in three days – but actually made with fillets of red mullet. 

 

 

• Risotto where the river meets the sea 

 

 

• An eel swimming up the Po river 

 

The eel "swims up the Po" from the Adriatic, always against the flow of the river, encounters polenta (the swoosh on the right) in Veneto; then wonderful tart Campanine apples in Mantua (the sauce on the left); and finally arrives at Modena and the delectable sweet grape juice known as saba (the basting sauce on the eel).

 

• Tribute to Normandy: not in fact an oyster but tartare of salt-marsh lamb, with cider sorbet and some oyster water… 

 

• Think green

 

• Hunting the Pigeon

 

• A thousand layer of leaves

 

• Oops I dropped the tart

 

• and to close, some mignardises…

 

What a meal! Stupendous!

Congratulations, chef Mikael Jonsson @HedoneLondon

Congratulations on winning your Michelin star!

We had a brilliant meal, and we are looking forward to the next time — when we are next in town!

 

Tonkotsu ramen, London

Early dinner, a light snack before the match. Just time for some ramen at the aptly-named Tonkotsu in Dean Street.

 

As a snack to start, a serving of gyoza potstickers. There are three kinds to choose from: these were the prawn and pork (there are also straight pork; and also shiitake and bamboo shoot)…

…with good craft beer to go with that — a hoppy lemony Citra IPA from The Kernel, one of my favourite microbreweries, down under the arches in the Maltby Street market.

 

The eponymous tonkotsu ramen is good: excellent rich broth cooked down slowly the proper way, using pork bones from prime local Berkshire pigs.

 

Light noodles, fine and straight; nice juicy chashu pork; and an excellent free-range ajitama egg;

 

The miso ramen was less successful, mainly because it's made with a veggie broth (we should have read the fine print before ordering). Not bad, but not what we were expecting [this is the kind of thing we are used to now.]

 

But all in all, nice to get a taste of our home from home. Gochisosama deshita.

 

Here's the Tonkotsu web site…

the remarkable amuse bouches @ Quique Dacosta Restaurante

To set the scene again... We are at Quique Dacosta Restaurante, an unlikely outpost of style and taste in the decidedly unglamorous suburbs of tourist-town Dénia. We are led to a long, low table in the garden, sitting in the warm evening open air just a whisper-in-the-trees away from the beach.

We sip on our bubbly and appraise the situation. Here we are in this oasis of calm, a self-contained realm of the gustatory senses... Having traveled from the other side of the world. Having looked forward and been thwarted earlier in the year (in the spring the restaurant opened later than originally scheduled)... Having already been given a glimpse and a taste from our visits to Mercat Bar and Vuelve Carolina...

To say our anticipation was high would be a massive understatement. We were not disappointed. From the moment our amuse bouches were served, we were transported...

The variety of flavours and textures were intended to do more than just prime the appetite. They were almost an assault on our taste buds, an indication that here we were stepping outside of the comfort zone and preconceived "likes" of daily life.

In no particular order... 1. Cold tea, chicory and hibiscus (the bowl at the bottom of the photo above)... 

2. Nori crisp — seaweed crackers, reminiscent of Japanese ponsen (below)...

 

3. Snails filled with caviar of cooking juices

 

 

4. Kumquat eggs (filled with flying fish roe)

 

5. Pickled Raïm of pastor, a bitter herb (the first time I'd ever heard of it), served on rocks, just they way they grow in the wild, up on the Montgó Massif.

 

6. More bitter herbs: Kalachoe and "caviar" of oil.

 

And lots of other appetizers that challenge the imagination and intellect as much as the taste buds.

These were just for starters. For the meal proper we adjourned indoors, anticipation well and truly whetted...

Besides the menu, everyone receives a little booklet of information about the restaurant, about Chef Dacosta and his philosophy. It also includes a notepad and pencil, so you can jot down notes as you eat.

Very useful — and very thoughtful too.

The full blow-by-blow account of the feast is on the next post here... 

41 Degrees — the Barça bar where the snacks are as cool as the clientele

Following up on my vids from last week... a few more images from 41°

A green olive, the perfect accompaniment to a potent and very well shaken martini. These are olives from El Bulli, though, which means they have been de- and re-constructed.

So good we ordered another half dozen...

Our barman was from Argentina, and he has his craft down perfectly. We asked for a cocktail, one of the house specials...

It was great, far better than you'd expect from a concoction called Creep Show that included green tea on the list of ingredients.

Here are few more images of the bar snacks: some (like the "olives") were brilliant. Others were just very good.

Parmesan cheese ice cream in crispy wafers...

"Airbags" — crisp balloons toped with ikura roe...

Galletas de gamba — crunchy crispy crackers with a deep shrimp aroma...

And for dessert, wonderful creamy redcurrant "profiteroles"...

pintxos nuevos @ Zeruko

Before leaving Basque Country, one final round of pintxos. And very good they were too.

Zeruko used to be a classic old-style bar, but it seems to have undergone a revolution in its kitchen, turning it into one of the latest and hottest of San Sebastian's "new-wave" pintxos places (since the last time we were there, anyway). The plates arrayed on the counter look spectacular — and what comes out of the kitchen even more so.

Here are a few of the morsels we tried — plus a few more we merely eyeballed with a view to trying on the next pintxos crawl (which, sadly, never happened)... 

This was the day's selection. We would have had one of everything if we'd had the time.

Amongst those we missed out on were the patties of morcilla and foie coated with ground pistachio (just visible in the top photo); the house-special smoked bacalao "La Hoguera" (literally the "bonfire", because it comes over a mini brazier); and these mysterious alien items studded with pine nuts (below)...

Among those we did manage to sample, this was one of the highlights: foie gras and battered bacalao, topped with a thin layer of meaty jelly enlivened with tart sherry vinegar...

A small sunny-side-up quail egg on a scattering of elvers, arranged on a "fin" of crispy deep-fried potato...

Goat cheese and apple (at the back); and at the front: skewers of spud, egg, tuna and green olive...

grilled artichokes...

And solomillo ("steak") of duck breast with more foie gras, served on an intense apple compote and a lovely swirl of berry fruit...

This in particular went brilliantly with the house red — a nice Rioja (David Moreno), proving that sometimes even an ordinary easy-drinking crianza can be exactly right.

The best way to sample the range of food here is to order the Tasting Menu (€25). interestingly, it's written in Spanish and French — but not Basque. Obviously it's aimed at out-of-town visitors rather than locals, and it did seem as though everyone in the bar was from other parts of Spain (with a few non-Spanish speakers as well).

Unfortunately we arrived at Zeruko the end of the evening, shortly before closing time, didn't have a chance to try everything, and never had time to go back.

Ah well, it's always nice to have something to look forward to for the next trip...

Asador Etxebarri — Basque mountain food

Asador Etxebarri was the second of our major destinations in Basque Country [the first was our return visit to the outstanding Arzak — about which more in a future post]. And destination is the correct word, because it lies up in the foothills of the mountains — and took us over three hours to get there from San Sebastian.

 

It was so worth it though — both for the amazing location and the remarkable cuisine.

 

The destination is Atxondo, a rustic village up in the hills just inland from the town of Durango, in Bizkaia/Vizcaya, the rural heart of Basque Country. It's really not so far from the coast but it's the mountains that dominate — especially at this time of year when they're covered with snow. Legend has it that brujas (wise women/witches) and other "misteriosos habitantes" used to live up in caves in these peaks...

Etxebarri itself is housed in an imposing old stone building right on the village's central square.

 

The ground floor houses the village bar, a bit dingy and ordinary. The dining room upstairs is much more spacious, with glimpses of the mountain slopes through the narrow windows.

 

Having come all this way, we decided to go the whole hog with the full tasting menu. It was a long meal — and so this is going to be a long post, with pics of every dish. So I'll keep the descriptions as concise as possible.

We started with a warming demitasse of thick leek and potato potage, topped with a thin slice of dried and reconstituted courgette, with some hearty home-baked bread...

 

A slice of bread toasted over a wood fire, topped with home-churned goat's milk butter and slices of black truffle, on a slate scattered with volcanic salt ...

 

Next a pair of gambas (for each of us). One served with a white begonia, the other with pink...

Etxebarri only uses ingredients from the local area — the seafood comes from the coast, just 10-15 km away, and is spectacular. 

 

 

 

 

More seafood: we are now starting to understand why Etxebarri is called an "asador". The word means grill, and every single dish — vegetable, seafood or meat — is prepared over that same wood fire, expertly calibrated to bring out the flavour of each ingredient.

Sea cucumber on a bed of garden-fresh baby peas... 

 

…followed by a row of tiny squid on a compote of onion...

 

This is on the edge of Rioja Country, so we ordered a gran reserva, which went very nicely with the meat courses that followed...

 

Fresh chorizo meat, formed not into sausages but patties, served very rare — almost tartare — on a slice of corn cooked in polenta style.

 

Here's a close up:

 

That was outstanding. But the highlight was what came next:

 

The egg opened to reveal a mound of sliced truffles concealing a perfectly molten egg yolk...

 

...on a bed of smooth purple yam (murasaki-imo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then a bowl of what looked like noodles but were actually elvers (baby eels). With some disbelief we saw some people tucking into huge full-size main portions of these. For us, even this small amount was very rich and filling — and like everything we were served at this meal, redolent of wood smoke from the open fire they were (very lightly) cooked over.

 

Finally we reached the main courses. For her: fish. Grilled bacalao (a fillet of fresh cod, salted but only lightly):

 

For him: a hearty chunk of Galician beef grilled on the bone, seared on the outside, nice and rare inside. This (obviously) was not local meat, but wonderful nonetheless!

 

Our first dessert: a mousse of goat's milk in woodland berry fruits (plenty of blackcurrant in that mix):

 

The second dessert (pain perdu);

 

Finally coffee and one last sweet: 

 

We staggered out and strolled around the village in a daze, drinking in the clear mountain air like a final heady dessert wine...

 

What a place, what a meal!

on the pintxos trail

Time for our first txakoli...

...and a few more pintxos. We're at La Viña now, and it's a little bit more old school. One of my favourites (from previous trips) and still as good and friendly as ever.

The pintxos are more traditional in here. That's deep-fried hake at the back; some pulpo on the right and grilled pimientos on the left. And these marinated peppers (below) were amazing.

One of the specialties of the house: canutillo de queso y anchoa, a hand-made "bugle" stuffed with philadelphia cheese, with a considerable anchovy running the length of it. It may look like an ice cream cone but it's definitely savoury — not sweet

This creation won La Viña a top prize in pintxos some ten years back: it was new wave then, but seems very conventional now... 

Time for another round of txakoli...

And one of the hot dishes from the kitchen: scrambled eggs with mushrooms. Simple but very good and wholesome.

There's only one way to finish: with another of the house favourites. The excellent tarta de queso.

Yes it's a beautifully baked cheesecake — but all cheese and no cake. Just the way to round off a successful pintxos lunch.

 

back in Basque Country...

And that means it's... Pintxos Time. First stop: La Cuchara de San Telmo.

It's right by the handsome wooden doors of the newly refurbished church dedicated to that very same saint, where the rebuilding work is finally done (the last time I was here, 2 years ago, the air was full of stone dust and judder of drilling).

Often bars like this in the old city make it hard to tell what to expect from the outside, but La Cuchara makes it perfectly plain: pintxos, cazuelas, cocina de cuchara y miniatura. In short, good food.

You can see the kitchen at the back — always a good sign.

What to drink? There's sidra, the acidic local cider; and wine of course — including txacoli. At lunchtime, though, most people seem to stick to beer.  

Keler is the local lager, brewed in San Sebastian, and it's pretty good. Make that una caña for me.

  

The cooking at La Cuchara is as good as I'd remembered. Everybody seems to order the bacalao, and with good reason — it's great. Here it's served with a sweet-savory onion compote...

Viera toro envuelta tocino bellota = scallops wrapped in acorn-fed Iberico bacon...

Carrillera de ternera al vino tinto = veal cheeks stewed in Rioja wine (and yes, there is an English menu!).  This was recommended to us by the master of the house — and it was outstanding!

And queso de cabra relleno verduras = crispy stuffed goat cheese with vegetables.

They only seem to use two different sauces: green (from parsley); and brown (bechamel, with a soy sauce accent). But that's no problem when the ingredients are this good.

A perfect start to a day of pinxos hopping... 

Just in case anyone doesn't recognize the locale — this is in the old city of San Sebastian.

more on pintxos in a previous post here...

pintxos: snacks of sophistication

You can't talk about the food of the Basques without mentioning their best-known contribution to the global gastronomic lexicon: pintxos (pinchos in Spanish), which is their unique and highly addictive take on tapas. 

Basque bites: A selection of modern  pintxos served in San Sebastian.

The idea is simple but brilliant: a slice of baguette-style bread topped with savory morsels and pierced with a long slender cocktail stick to hold it all together (a pintxo literally means a spike). The toppings can range from straightforward tidbits — slivers of ham or cheese or maybe even a wedge of Spanish omelet — to cooked morsels of considerable sophistication. They may be as small and dainty as party finger foods or substantial enough to make a wholesome snack.

The world capital of pintxos has to be San Sebastian, specifically the grid of narrow, pedestrian-only streets that cross the old city close to the fishing port. We have spent many a happy lunchtime and evening there, moving from one bar to the next, sampling the delicacies arrayed on the counter and then moving on for another bite down the street.

The drinks of choice are wine — either sharp, fizzy txakoli or the local red, txikito, or beer (zurito in Basque), although lightly alcoholic cider (sidra) is sometimes served.

In recent years, pintxos bars have caught on outside of Spain, but not, surprisingly, in Tokyo. Several attempts have been made (most notably the exciting new-wave creations of Pintxos Beppo, sadly no longer in operation), though none have stayed the course.

To give us an idea of what this city is missing, Txoko in Nishi-Azabu offers a small but very well constructed selection of pintxos, both a la carte and as part of its set menu. Two favorites: a single shrimp set on cream cheese and drizzled with homemade alioli mayonnaise; and one that's spread with pisto, a delectable mixture of red pepper, onion and eggplant, cooked down in ratatouille style.

[First published in the Japan Times Friday, June 5, 2009. Here]