Basques Add Distinct Flavor to Spanish Cuisine

When three-star chef Juan Mari Arzak pays his daily visit to La Brecha market in the heart of San Sebastian, he’s as a much a hero as a soccer star. Everybody knows him and calls out greetings.

Food is an important part of the ancient Basque culture, and this city is the gastronomic capital of Spanish Basque country. Stall after stall in the turn-of-the century La Brecha market is filled with eye-catching displays, everything from wild pigeons and fat, grain-fed hens to smoky Idiazabel cheese from the mountains, musky wild mushrooms and golden honey.

Before Queen Isabel II and her entourage turned it into one of the belle epoque’s fashionable seaside resorts, San Sebastian was a small fishing port.

It still is, but a small and very cosmopolitan city has grown up around it. Women still sell shrimp and stone crabs in paper cones at the port, and San Sebastian’s fish market has its own imposing stone building at La Brecha market.

Fishmongers start setting up their stalls in the early morning, and by 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. the stalls are artfully arranged cascades of live seafood and fish so fresh that it’s still wriggling. Bay leaves and lemon halves are tucked around whole fish, as are tangles of milky squid, silvery anchovies and feisty lobsters with their claws taped shut.

“The best fish in Spain--the best fish in Europe!” Arzak said, as he stopped to pick up some merluza (hake) and live crayfish. “Basque cooking lets the quality of the ingredients shine through undisguised, and what we have available to us is remarkable.

“In a radius of 100 miles we have fish from the Cantabrian sea, mushrooms and game from the Pyrenees, vegetables from the Navarra Valley and wines from Rioja, plus foie gras and Armagnac from southwest France.”

At his restaurant on the old road to France, people wander in with their Michelin guides and settle in to the serious business of eating well. The sober dining rooms are furnished with antiques, amber lamps and hand-woven linens.

To start, he served a gutsy pate of rascasse, the rockfish that gives bouillabaisse so much of its intense flavor, followed by a warm lobster salad with chives and julienned leeks on a bed of tangled wild greens.

His take on the classic squid in ink sauce was a large tender squid, scored and grilled, and served in an ink and red wine sauce scented with rosemary. Instead of presenting stuffed spider crab in the shell, he bundles the savory stuffing into fine crepes and crisps them in the oven, a signature dish.

The taste of prunes is a brilliant foil to langoustine with the sweet red and green peppers used so much in Basque cooking.

As a young man, Arzak worked with such chefs as Boyer, Troisgros and Senderens, and made friends with his generation of French chefs, so when nouvelle cuisine arrived in France the winds of change wafted right over the border.

Arzak rounded up his Basque chef friends and started the cucina nueva movement. This “renewal” of Basque cooking has changed and refined the presentation, and lightened some dishes, but the roots are still very much Basque.

Just across from the market is Casa Nicolasa. At the turn of the century, when the Spanish aristocracy summered here, this was the fanciest place to eat in town. It’s still very well known for classic Basque cuisine.

The new owner and young chef is Jose Juan Castillo. He might serve txistorra, tiny pimiento-stained chorizo that are a specialty of San Sebastian, as an appetizer. Castillo thinks nouvelle cuisine is getting to taste the same all over the world.

“It’s like a disco. Close your eyes, where are you?” So he’s committed to preserving classic Basque dishes such as chipperones (thumb-size stuffed squid in black ink sauce) and txangurro (stuffed spider crab), or hake cheeks in a fragrant green parsley sauce, and little roasted wild birds wrapped in bacon.

He does have a few new dishes up his sleeve, too, such as a brik (North African pastry) of langoustines. And watch out for the orgia di postres, an “orgy” of half a dozen traditional desserts, including a superlative rice pudding.

“In the Basque country we live to eat. After a big wedding or reception and everybody is full, they are discussing where to go and eat,” he says, laughing. “But we never eat in movie theaters like you Americans. Absolute quiet reigns.”

A winding drive up Monte Igueldo, one of the three mountains that shelter San Sebastian and its curving sweep of beach, takes you to Akelare, a spectacularly situated restaurant with a view of rolling green hills and the sea beyond.

Here, lunch might start with miniature crepe filled with wild mushrooms, and a warm salad of seared scallops with their coral on a bed of mixed greens.

Mustachioed chef Pedro Subijana plays on the classic red beans and blood sausage combination by wrapping a blood sausage in cabbage and serving it with a distinguished pureed red bean sauce.

Dazzling fresh rodaballo or turbot is paired with a bright carrot sauce; a rustic dish of bacalao or salt cod cooked in an earthenware casserole is heady with garlic and sweet red peppers.

Subijana’s flair for pastries (he was trained as a pastry chef) shows up in his gossamer puff pastry with warm pastry cream, and a tart of roasted pineapple with pine nuts and raspberry sorbet.

For straightforward grilled meats and one of the best cellars in Spain, head for Rekondo, halfway down the mountain from Akelare.

It’s an informal, friendly place decorated with vintage bullfight posters. In summer, the best seats are on its outdoor terrace. Txomin Rekondo does very simple things, but every one is exactly right.

Start with the softly perfumed jamon di Jabugo, the exquisite raw-cured Spanish ham, and a revuelto, a loosely scrambled egg dish, here made with wild mushrooms or fresh anchovies and spinach.

When you order the veal or well-aged beef, Rekondo cuts a two- to three-inch slab to T-bone from a handsome hunk of meat. Unless you tell him differently. It’s grilled rare over hardwood charcoal. Sweet red pepper strips sauteed in olive oil and garlic, and a vinegary green salad with lots of onion accompany it. Wedges of fried golden potatoes, too.

Express an interest, and Rekondo might leave the grill for a few minutes to show off his remarkable cellar of old Riojas and other Spanish wines, which includes a fine collection of Bordeaux, along with top wines from Italy, California, and Australia.

Most of them are not on the list; you have to ask. And because the cellar is down a few flights through a maze of rooms, he has to leave the grill and run downstairs to get your choice.

This may be the perfect restaurant for red wine lovers--a long list of wines from heralded vintages and fine grilled meats and simple food to go with them.

A surprising find in this region where menus are overwhelmingly fish.

Some Restaurant Recommendations in San Sebastian

Restaurants: Arzak, Alto de Miracruz, 21, San Sebastian. Closed Sunday night and Mondays, plus two weeks in June and three weeks in November. Expensive.

Akelare, Barrio Igueldo (no number), about a 10-minute drive from the center of San Sebastian. Closed Sunday night and Monday, plus first two weeks of June and all of December. Expensive.

Casa Nicolasa, Aldamar 4, San Sebastian. Closed Monday nights (except August and September), plus three weeks in March. Expensive.

Rekondo, Paseo Igueldo 57, San Sebastian. Closed Wednesdays, plus the last 10 days of June and the first three weeks of November. Moderately expensive.

Where to Stay: Hotel Maria Cristina, Paseo Republica Argentina 4, San Sebastian. Has 139 rooms. Doubles about $210 to about $280; suites about $730 to about $945.

Built in 1912, the five-star Maria Cristina is an elegant and luxurious hotel, beautifully furnished in period. This is where the high rollers and film stars stay during the end-of-summer International Film Festival. Suites have large balconies overlooking the Urumea River. Conveniently two blocks from La Brecha market and a five-minute walk from La Concha beach.

Hotel Niza, Zubieta 56, San Sebastian. Has 41 rooms. Doubles about $68. This small hotel looks on Paseo de la Concha, the elegant promenade that wraps around La Concha beach.

Getting There: San Sebastian is 12 miles from the French border at Irun-Hendaya, and is the tourist and cultural capital of the province of Guizpucoa, with an area of 1,200 square miles, the smallest in Spain. Guizpucoa, along with Alava and Viscaya (and Navarra, in spirit), make up the Pais Vasco or Basque country.

San Sebastian’s airport is in Fuenterrabia 18 miles east of the city--domestic flights only. International and domestic flights arrive in Bilbao at Sondica International Airport 65 miles west of San Sebastian. Take a bus or taxi from there.

Call Iberia Airline at (800) 772-4642 for information. The other nearby international airport is across the French border in Biarritz, 33 miles east of San Sebastian. Call Air France (800) 237-2747 for information.