How curious that San Sebastian — the seaside city on Spain's northeastern coast whose body stretches as sensuously as a cat over three glamorous, curving beaches — has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any city outside Paris, with a population roughly equal to that of Des Moines, Iowa. I can't help but marvel at the preeminence of Basque cooking as three-star chef Juan Mari Arzak stands behind my dinner companion, enthusiastically massaging his shoulders while delivering a mini lecture on how the kitchen manages to use every part of the monkfish in front of us: the unctuous marrow is carefully spooned onto the plate; the thin slices of perforated backbone are flash fried, then propped on the mellow loin. Even the skin is carefully crisp fried.
Juan Mari continues, describing how the succulent oysters we've just eaten, celófan de ostras templadas, earned their crunch: an iridescent layer of starch was carefully peeled from the pan after potatoes were cooked and wrapped like a gauzy veil around the warmed oysters. When we wonder at Juan Mari's world-famous poached egg, flor de huevo y tartufo en grasa de oca con txistorra de datiles (flower of egg -- named for its shape — and truffle in goose fat with red Basque sausage and dates), Juan Mari's daughter and partner, Elena, appears with a poached egg twisted in a package of plastic wrap, revealing the simple secret of its preparation. By dessert, when sopa y chocolate "entre viñedos" arrives, a puree of strawberry with "grapes" that burst in your mouth like bath beads oozing rich chocolate, any lingering doubts about what Spanish cooks are up to seem to ooze away as well.
Though I've been to Restaurante Arzak before, I confess I didn't truly understand modern Spanish cooking until I learned about its recent history. Thirty years ago, Juan Mari and Pedro Subijana, of Restaurante Akelare, led a group of Spanish chefs during a meeting with France's great chefs. It happened in Madrid on the occasion of a visit by Paul Bocuse and other stars, like Michel Guérard and Alain Chapel. Nouvelle cuisine was raging throughout France; Juan Mari and his pals came away with this conviction: "We have excellent ingredients, we have a strong tradition, we have the skill; we can be every bit as modern and avant-garde as the French."
That battle cry led Juan Mari to invent la nueva cocina vasca, New Basque cuisine. Subijana, whose restaurant just earned its third Michelin star, recalls that Madrid moment: "It was the revolution in Basque food; we preserved authenticity yet made inventive food with el mismo espiritu, the same spirit." Today the best-known Spanish revolutionary is not Basque at all, but Ferran Adrià, of Barcelona, certainly caught that Basque spirit. Juan Mari calls him a genius and says he's learned from him, too. A generation younger than Juan Mari, Adrià is known as an alchemist in the kitchen for the way he redefines the science of flavor, turning the sweet salty (think curry ice cream, Roquefort sorbet) and concentrating flavor with foams and jellies. His experiments with "molecular gastronomy" are imitated worldwide, frequently with disastrous results.
Last fall, at a conference at New York's International Culinary Center featuring Spain's most renowned chefs, the best Spanish chef in America — José Andrés, of Jaleo, in Washington, D.C. — gave an emotionally cranked-up speech. "When Arzak embraced Adrià [in 1992], that was the instant Spanish cuisine became truly great," he cried. "They share, they share, they share!"
So why, you may wonder, are we in San Sebastián and not at Adrià's El Bulli, in Catalonia? Because although the younger Adrià may be more famous, Juan Mari's food is every bit as dazzling and a lot less daunting. Adrià wants to make you think; Juan Mari wants to make you dinner.
