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Josean MartĂnez Alija is the chef at Restaurante Guggenheim in the Frank Gehry-designed museum that has attractedattention to Bilbao. He is among the city's growing number of talented chefs.
In Bilbao, It'sNot Just the Museum 4e\ /'"
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subway system, Santiago Calatrava bridge and, of course, Frank Gehry's magits Norman Foster nificent Guggenheim Museum, washed Iike a titanium-c1ad shipwreck on the once gritty shores of the Nervión river, Bilbao has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last 15 years. So dramatic that the phrase "Bilbao effect" now describes the efforts of any city to remake itself from industrial blight into tourist attraction by investing heavily in the arts. So drama tic, too, that Bilbao is challenging the supremacy of San Sebastián, the genteel seaside resort to its east, as the Basque Country's primary tourist destination. Except, that is, when it comes to food. Birthplace of the new Basque cuisine in the 1970s, San Sebastián remains Spain's great culinary mecca. Talk to a resident, and you will inevitably hear a statistic that must be drilled into schoolchildren along with their multiplication tables: San Sebastián has more Michelin stars per capita than any other city in the world. But Bilbao is making inroads here, too. Just outside the city Iimits, the industriallandscape rapidly gives way to countryside, a proximity that helps explain the deep connection that Bilbaínos feel for their local products, from the Zalla purple onion to the Euskal oiloa chicken. !t's no accident that Bilbao has perhaps the most active Slow Food chapter in the country, nor that its talented young chefs tend to be deeply interested in cooking from the native larder. Now, enough of them are opening their own places for the city to come c10se to achieving gastronomic critical mass. "We're not there yet," said Josean Martínez Alija, chef at Restaurante Guggenheim, about the possibility of Bilbao's cuisine surpassing San Sebastián's. "Butjust wait a couple ofyears." Actually, there's no need to wait. The dishes being turned out by Mr. Martínez and a handful of other local chefs are already so accomplished, and yes, artistic, that it's fair to talk of a whole new Bilbao Effect, this one taking place in the city's kitchens.
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Restaurante Guggenheim Mr. Martínez may well be the most radical chef in Spain. He trained at El Bulli and Mugaritz, but while the avant• garde cuisine of those restaurants tends tn no;::a'7'7Jo tho
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splotched restaurant inside Mr. Gehry's museum, there are no artful swirls of sauce, no visually arresting combinations of ingredients, not even a garnish. It's not until you bite into what looks to be an unadorned endive heart or dab an apparently raw chunk of avocado in translucent broth that you understand how profoundly innovative Mr. Martínez's cooking is. Those endives are first "cooked" in a solution of quicklime, so that their texture is transformed into something clamlike, then cooked again in a shellfish broth to reinforce ti.": association. Served with a few raw endive leaves, they are minimalism embodied. Yet the interplay between tc~:ture and flavor is remarkably complex. And remarkably delicious. Mr. Martínez makes the simplest things taste more purely of themselves, and deploys technique instead of additives tQ create new textures. There are no spherifications or foams on his menu, but there is that avocado, steamed to foie-gras silkiness, and swaddled in a cuttlefish-andcilantro broth made intensely fragrant by a low-pressure cooker. For dessert, there is a fantastically good herbed peach, its exterior Iike fruit leather, its interior almost Iiquid, set atop a luscious pastry cream made, astonishingly, from potatoes. If that weren't revolutionary enough in this pig-fetishizing land, Martínez focuses almost entirely on vegetables. A
-- ------------0 -------, ----.-------J one protein - perhaps a baby squid lacquered with sweet onion or1the grilled young horse meat that the menu refers to, bluntly, as "colt chunk." Vegetables, Mr. Martínez finds, allow for greater experimentation. "I'd rather confront a carrol than a piece of flesh," he said. "You can be much more crea ti ve." Restaurante Guggenheim, Avenida Abandoibarra, 2; (34-94) 423-9333; restauranteguggenheim.com; tasting menu 70 euros, $93 at $1.33 to the euro. (Prices here and below do not include drinks or tip.)
Azurmendi Six miles from Bilbao, Azurmendi is deceptively bucolic. Just as you're being lulled into complacency by the vistas from the dining room's windows, the chef Eneko Atxa, who trained with Martin Berasategui, delivers a jolt: a "reverse egg," a yolk whose interior has been replaced with black truffle. In lesser hands, this highly theatrical fare would be easy to mock. But Mr. Atxa puts spectacle largely at the service of f1avor. A row of charred beet "soil" comes dotted with tiny seasonal vegetables to form one of his signature dishes, the Garden. The "seawater" that the restaurant serves with its single oyster (poured over dry ice, so that the aroma, as well as smoke, enrobes the table), is distilled from algae using a contraption that Mr. Atxa and his in-house
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real seawater," Mr. Atxa said, "but by the time we got it back to the kitchen, it had lost f1avor." For those who tremble at the sight of Iiquid nitrogen, Azurmendi offers a handful of traditional Basque dishes, inc1uding a luxuriously overstuffed bowl of kokotxas, the tiny hake jowls that are a Basque delicacy. But it would be a shame to miss out on Mr. Atxa's unbridled creativity, especially when it comes to dessert. For fall, Moss is a swipe of tart apple sauce topped with a Granny Smith-and-arugula foam, then served on a piece of slate that, appropriately, rests on the table vertically. Azurmendi, Corredor del Txorierri, Larrabetzu; (34-944) 558-866; www .azurmendi.biz; tasting menus 55 and 80 euros.
Mina Mina has exactly the kind of qualities you hope to discover while traveling: modest location, unexpectedly fine food and mostly unnoticed by the food-blogging masses. The Spanish press has only recently begun to pay attention to it, although the restaurant opened four years ago. "We never advertised," said the chef Alvaro Garrido, who runs Mina with his wife, Lara Martín. "We wanted to give ourselves time to mature." A wise move. In fact, Mr. Garrido and Ms. Martín, who is also a chef but has lately been running the front of the
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Mina offers only two tasting menus, both based on what is available in the market - Bilbao's largest - across the river from the restaurant. On the plate, those fresh ingredients are transformed into dishes that surprise not with dazzle but with their equilibrium. Shrimp tartare gets sweetness from sherry-infused chunks of melon, and both tartness and texture from a sauce that sets tapioca pearls adrift in pool s of green apple gelée. A "risotto," which contains not a grain of rice, is made from the large Basque squid called begi haundi whose meaty flesh is balanced with the creaminess of butter and a hit of wasabi. Mr. Garrido and Ms. Martín met while they were working for Paco Torreblanca, Spain's premier pastry chef, and their desserts are especially good. A brown sugar sabayon capped with mandarin sorbet is delicious enough to make you forget you've already eaten six courses. "We change the menu every day," Mr. Martín said. "But that's one dish that people won't let us remove." Mina, Muelle Marzana; (34-944) 795938; restaurantemina.es; tasting menus 50 and 65 euros.
Bascook When A Fuego Negro opened in San Sebastián several years ago, the city was so ready for a modern pintxos (tapas) bar that the place becam'e an overnight sensation. Bascook, which opened this summer, seeks to fill roughIy the same niche in Bilbao. Admittedly, it's a sit-down restaurant with no bitesized snacks on display, but it is a fun place to split a few dishes with friends. Bascook's chef, Aitor Elizegi, has transformed an old salt cellar into a cozy den of a restaurant, with a menu unlike any other. It comes as part of a newspaper the restaurant publishes, and its offerings are arranged in three seemingly random categories: vegetarian, global and "Kilo meter 1," for locally inspired dishes. With the exception of the soups, including a nutty cornbread purée, almost everything is meant for sharing. There are some well-made straightforward dishes, Iike fresh cockles, grilled to smoky sweetness. But the most triumphant gently incorporate avant-garde techniques. Voluptuous swirls of crisp-fried calamari are served, improbably yet deliciously, with Parmesan "noodles" made from agar~gar. A!oIi pulls the clis~ together, and