The attention lavished on us at Restaurante Arzak is not atypical. In this pink house on a residential corner ten minutes from the beaches — built by Juan Mari's grandparents in 1897 as a tavern, in which he was born sixty-five years ago, and continued as a restaurant by his mother, who, he says, taught him everything — all diners, too, are bathed in Juan Mari and Elena's glow. Far from doing the dining-room victory lap other chefs indulge in, this pair dance deliberately from table to table. "People come for special treatment the way they come for special food," says Juan Mari.
And come they do, from across Europe — French film directors; what's left of Spanish royalty — from America and from around the corner, in elegant suits and in shirtsleeves. "We do not know how to treat our guests like customers," says Elena. "We come out and treat them like friends."
It's the same ebullient Juan Mari we meet the next day at the Brecha market in the Parte Vieja, San Sebastián's old town. Here he is, kissing the lined cheeks of lady fishmongers, grabbing the forearms of sausage makers, leaning his face close to share confidences — all contact, delight and mischief. This man is a Spanish mensch, I decide. Juan Mari picks up a cardoon, whose celerylike stalks are as big as a man's arm: "Ah, cardo!" he cries with joy. A brown-green apple almost brings him to tears: "It's not just an apple, it's a Basque apple." Errezilla, he writes in my notebook.
We spill into the street, smack into a crazy parade. It's one of the city's gastronomic societies — those famous century-old social-dining clubs in which only men were allowed to cook — celebrating something this morning. We bump into people dwarfed by giant papier-mâché heads, musicians who look as if they fell out of a comic-opera marching band and chefs in toques beating kegs with drumsticks. The crowd weaves through the old streets past glowing bars, their counters piled high with platters of tasty pintxos (Basque tapas): bread slices topped with white anchovies called boquerones; salt cod called bacalao; and piquillo peppers, Serrano ham and squid or mussels. Even this early, the bars are crowded with locals knocking back txakoli, the fruity Basque white wine.
Some think gastronomic societies are partly responsible for San Sebastián's remarkable food tradition. But I think maybe it's not that Basque chefs are better cooks; maybe they are so good because they are Basque. Like their shipbuilding, seafaring, whale-hunting ancestors, they are restless, fearless and open to the world. Perhaps more than talent boils in their blood: perhaps it's a furious sense of adventure as well.
When we arrive back at the dining room for lunch, women in long Basque linen aprons deftly maneuver the curving stairway to the second-floor dining room — more traditional than the ground floor's redone concrete modernity ("We ran out of money," Juan Mari explains, laughing) — balancing trays of cigalitas (langoustines), their pink tails in the air.
Up another flight is Juan Mari's Idea Room, lined with shelves, perfect rows of small plastic boxes, 1,700 of them. Each holds an herb or a spice. It's a concept admittedly influenced by Adrià's scientific approach. "People think that because we use local products, we make traditional food," Elena says. "But that's wrong. We are always experimenting. Take a cold carrot soup. 'What if it were icy, more like a granita?' I suggest. Then the chefs in the Idea Room will try five variations, and we'll see which works."
Elena, thirty-eight, just returned to work after her second baby; her maternity leave coincided with Arzak's annual month off. "I'm very practical," she says. Before lunch service, her family joins her in the kitchen to eat. "When it was obvious that I loved coming to the restaurant as a little girl," Elena recalls, "my parents tried to discourage me: 'Don't think this is like going to the circus,' they said." (Her mother, Maite Espina, is still involved in the restaurant; her sister, Marta, now works at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. "It's a shame," Elena says. "She has an excellent palate.")
"I told my parents, 'Look, let me study at hotel school in Switzerland, and if I don't like it I'll quit.'" But she didn't. Instead, she learned English, French and German, interned at La Gavroche in London at nineteen, at Troisgros a year later. And she always returned to the restaurant. Eventually, her father asked, "Elena, show me what you've learned." "He gave me considerable freedom, but he was also free to criticize. Finally, I felt strong enough to criticize him back!" she says. Now it's difficult to discern where one ends and the other begins. "Without Elena, there would be no Arzak," her father says often of the young woman destined to run one of the most important restaurants in Europe. On Elena's slim shoulders rests a legacy of four generations, three stars, two babies and one proud papa.
Where to Eat
The glory of this food town comes through, of course, at Restaurante Arzak (21 Alto de Miracruz; 011-34-943-278-465) and at Pedro Subijana's Restaurante Akelare (56 P. Padre Orcolaga; 011-34-943-311-209).
For more casual but no less delicious fare, walk around the Parte Vieja (Old Town) for pintxos at these bars: Bar Txepetxa (5 Calle Pescadería) and Juana Enea (22 Calle 31 de Agosto). The most opulent pintxos are in the Gros neighborhood at Bar Bergara (8 Calle General Artexte).
Where to Stay
Choose the simple Hotel Niza (rooms from $176; 56 Calle Zubieta; 011-34-943-426-663), right on the boardwalk of La Concha beach, or the more formal Hotel María Cristina (rooms from $612; 4 Paseo Republica Argentina; 011-34-943-437-600), located nearby, part of Starwood's Luxury Collection.
