Azurmendi-Eneko Atxa

[Pablo Carrion]

Ive reserved to eat at Azurmendi and was wondering whether anyone had been and their opinion. I gather its a tasting menu only. Chef Eneko Atxa has run the kitchen at Etxebarri (personal favorite) and sounds very promising.

I will definitely write up a post after our meal there (July 28).

[pedro]

I haven't been there, but this is what José Carlos Capel, critic from El País, wrote about it:

Azurmendi - Eneko Atxa

[Pablo Carrion]

Thanks, he's even had some time to mature since that article. I'm looking forward to it.

Saturday lunch will be there and Sunday lunch again at Etxebarri-for the 3rd time (cant get enough)-I want to try the tasting menu this time.

[Pablo Carrion]

These are the 2 dishes I most liked at Azurmendi:

-roast lobster with fresh herbs and smoked with tea. This dish is presented under a wine glass full of tea smoke and lifted in front of you so that you get a beautifully smoky and very well cooked lobster.

-huelva prawns marinated with salts, citrus and flowers. Raw sweet top quality prawns beatifully presented under smoky salts and tiny candied citrus and wild flowers.

Overall however, I have to say I wasnt specially impressed with the rest of the dishes. Maybe its the fact that they were all quite heavy and fatty with very few concessions to vegetables, and in my taste overprocessed and overcooked. I think more and more I enjoy freshness and simplicity in a dish...

We did drink some nice wines, though. Their own good txacoli, a nice baigorri oak-aged white and a baigorri de garaje red, which I thought was very nice indeed.

As for Etxebarri, there are no words to describe the quality of ingredients and the expert restraint exercised in cooking the food we had today...again the marvelous house chorizo, an amazingly rich bread and smoked butter with grated truffles, the palamo prawns (I can only remember prawns this good at Avenida in Gata, and then without the smokiness), oysters on seaweed, caviar, mussels with tomato broth, tuna belly, cod with roast peppers, and galician beef. Dessert was a cheese icecream with berries.

I also have to say Victor is really such a genuninely nice, down to earth person. We have arranged to experiment baking/grilling breads in his ovens and grills this summer, when I will spend a couple of weeks holiday close to his place. We both agree that he would "close the loop" on his concept of homemade wood-based cooking if he made his own and unique doughs.