Restaurant Magazine's World's 50 Best '08

[Gary Marshall]

Last time I was there, Victor was saving the very last angulas of the season for a special event and REFUSED to let us have any, for any price. I am very good at begging, but no good. Now he is giving them away to people who don't even like them and who begrudge the cost!

To be fair they weren't given away and until they're received who knows if they'll like them or not?

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200e is not a give away, and scott loved them. if i'f have known they were coming i'd have said no straight away.

I just thought that the portion was out of line, it's happened before to us in spain with bloody red prawns from denia that made an interesting diversion but not the 1/3rd of the total bill that they ended up charging us (90e for 9 prawns in askua)

[Gary Marshall]

Quite a few people here seem to be able to justify travelling into the depths of Atxondo-Butfuck just to beg for a bowl of the proper stuff.

.

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not any more, it's taken me two trips to spain and a bout of food poisioning to finally nail down i really don't enjoy this back to basics 'it's all about the ingredients cuisine'.

if there's not a whole brigade slaving away i'm not interested, i didn't grow up eating the arse end of a bit of fish and i'm not going to start now.

[spanielking]

LOL, you said Flux Dumpers!

[Scott]

Last time I was there, Victor was saving the very last angulas of the season for a special event and REFUSED to let us have any, for any price. I am very good at begging, but no good. Now he is giving them away to people who don't even like them and who begrudge the cost!

To be fair they weren't given away and until they're received who knows if they'll like them or not?

←

did you "ask" or order them, or did they come as part of the kitchen just sending out things?

[Gary Marshall]

Last time I was there, Victor was saving the very last angulas of the season for a special event and REFUSED to let us have any, for any price. I am very good at begging, but no good. Now he is giving them away to people who don't even like them and who begrudge the cost!

To be fair they weren't given away and until they're received who knows if they'll like them or not?

←

did you "ask" or order them, or did they come as part of the kitchen just sending out things?

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the kitchen sent them out as part of a tasting menu. not requested.

[Scott]

Last time I was there, Victor was saving the very last angulas of the season for a special event and REFUSED to let us have any, for any price. I am very good at begging, but no good. Now he is giving them away to people who don't even like them and who begrudge the cost!

To be fair they weren't given away and until they're received who knows if they'll like them or not?

←

did you "ask" or order them, or did they come as part of the kitchen just sending out things?

←

the kitchen sent them out as part of a tasting menu. not requested.

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ahh. Ok I'd be a bit pissed off if it were me.

however...

consider this; last time I was there I was speaking with Lennox the sous chef (good brisbane boy and the only one who spoke english!) and he made the point that they have such an eclectic range of customers. from the locals who just come in wanting some steak or whatever for their tea, and guys who fly in with helicopters looking for some of the best produce in the world. a very different set of demands, and they were sometimes caught a bit trying to juggle.

He also made the point that it was well worth coming seasonally and personally vouched for the elvers; when they were in season we just had to come in and give it a go. (nb. elvers don't sound my cup of tea, but they are to some people obviously). and as Culnista says if they are one of the 2 places with live ones, they are going to be on the hit the list for those people who do.

anyway, point being you guys obviously looked like food tourists of the helicopter variety and they assumed that this was the sort of thing you were here for.

think of it this way, if you were there for the elvers - and its not totally out of reason that you parked your helicopter on a side road - you would expect 4 portions.

perhaps they should have asked though.

surprised you weren't that impressed by the steak, I've had nothing comparable in this country at all, not nearly. amazing char, texture and flavour. was it still the the 16 yr old dairy cattle?

[Gary Marshall]

replace 'helicopter' with 'local taxi driver with no f'ing idea where he was going'

we did want the works and 99% of the time happy to take our chances was just that course was so far out of line with the cost of the others, obviously they didn't realise scott and i aren't quite in the millionaire league of our dining companions but were splitting the bill!

(and as i mentioned before it's not a unique situation to extebarri, as soon as we turn up they just can't get the percebes, red prawns, cochechas (sp) elvers and the like out quickly enough, none of which are my favourites, so as i say it's probably spain doesn't suit my tastes at the end of the day which is fine.)

lennox sorted out the menu for us, he did ask if there was anything we didn't eat, not being au fait with exactly what they served beyond the steak, elvers didn't cross my mind, though i did mention no brains. That's not me , to eat, for clarity

It's not that the steak was bad, it just wasn't appreciably better than we had in an assador in bilbao, ripa. don't get me wrong i could have eaten plenty of it and they did ask if we wanted another one, and for all my whinging it was my favourite meal of the trip, after ripa (which was only for some peppers and a steak as i was later in arrival than the others who had the works) i think you could make up a great menu at extebarri from the ALC dishes, i didn't even see a menu!

Edited May 1, 2008 by Gary Marshall (log)

[ameiden]

I also had the baby eels at Extebarri as part of a tasting menu a few weeks ago. (You can read my full report in the Extebarri thread on the Spain forum.)

When we initially asked for our tasting menu, the waitress went into the kitchen and came back with a list of things on her note pad that we could have. As we are fairly open-minded and our Spanish was not good enough to understand every single dish she was proposing, we said yes to everything.

Once the eels arrived, my wife immediately refused (but then so she did with the oysters earlier), so I had two of the dishes that you see above, totalling 100 Euros for this course only. They were served with a very precious looking mother-of pearl fork. Had I been familiar with the smoky taste and the crunchy texture in advance, I would probably not have spend this kind of money. Reading now how rare this dish is, I am glad I did. Beansprouts "al dente" with tiny black eyes and flavours from the grill sums it up rather nicely.