tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44604481607083984172024-03-05T06:07:40.726+01:00Berlin Dinner ClubThe blog of the Berlin Dinner Club in Germany. Comments, advice, tips and general information about dining in Berlin and Europe and around the worldChris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-42499327481220550052008-04-13T04:33:00.035+02:002008-04-13T23:31:31.664+02:00Kaiseki in Japan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAcFroqURocnioYe7Q4y_FOAGypmmz_j-LbIv7ZNVVC_lNvMAdM8tCJY10PWmJf__m8Oe-Ni3swX4nP6-XfI3ho1kjQT-No0HKmXu_WIs_30H4W52gnZOKQODPrZomjCvvN5XVDQOLPI/s1600-h/P4060855.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAcFroqURocnioYe7Q4y_FOAGypmmz_j-LbIv7ZNVVC_lNvMAdM8tCJY10PWmJf__m8Oe-Ni3swX4nP6-XfI3ho1kjQT-No0HKmXu_WIs_30H4W52gnZOKQODPrZomjCvvN5XVDQOLPI/s200/P4060855.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188557936148251714" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Since my first visit in 2006, I always loved coming back to Japan, a place where people are like little flecks of nori in the miso of life. Or a speck of aduki bean paste in the daifuku of existence. Or something along those lines. I'm no poet, ok?</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Anyway, in April 2008, I was once again in Japan, and since I really like and admire most Japanese cuisine, I had thought that it's about time to sample some local haute cuisine. To be honest, I never found Japan to be an expensive place for dining, and that's not because I am rich or anything. I just never did outrageous things like order bottles of</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> Petrus or single-malt scotches or eat sushi off a naked woman. Or even try <span style="font-style: italic;">fugu</span> (poisonous blowfish). That is just not my thing as I'm a shy, retiring sort </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">of person in real life. Ask anyone. But I like food and often, the best food I have encountered in Japan are from little family restaurants </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">where they make only one main kind of dish, like soba or udon or kushiage but they've been doing the same dishes for several generations so usually they have gotten it right by now. My best suggestion is to just pop into a place with only Japanese signs and just gesture that you want to eat. The Japanese are so polite that often the host will show you what they can offer (usually via a picture menu), and then you just order whatever you fancy. In this way, I have encountered some splendid food, from </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">spicy pork broths made from bones that have been simmered (not boiled) for days, to stunning <span style="font-style: italic;">zarusoba</span>, a cold plate of soba noodles dipped in <span style="font-style: italic;">dashi </span>sauce, to various kinds of rice dishes served with meat mixed with raw egg which somehow still tastes so <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>. I would never eat raw eggs in Europe but in Japan, the standard of hygiene is really much better than in Europe and the quality and freshness of the food is so good that I really do trust the restaurants, and trust is really the secret to eating well in Japan. And a sense of adventure! :o)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But there is a higher order of food in </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Japan, called <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki</span>, the haute cuisine of Japanese food. Apparently, the phrase <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>means "stones in the bosom", and is related to some old Zen monks' habit of putting warm stones around their bellies to ward off hunger pangs. To be honest, how this relates to haute cuisine, I have no idea as every <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>I have been to don't serve stones, cold or hot. What they do serve are very unusual dishes, made lovingly from the freshest ingredients, presented beautifully as virtual works of art and they are designed to excite </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">the senses of sight, smell and taste.<br /><br />As the area around Kyoto is known for the best <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>in Japan, I started with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Uma no Me</span>, </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6K7Mu5N16CXjKY3XRlSucyeeNaOf-wWWtVDx_kuOaHWiGaXx_vfCrVjkEA4Di5gFiRzQ0ySruXvLP-SVKy7Ornytksbv2V3jKIhwcL0K6F216KsCs-tPj_fPgwKN9yZBgDazilYPPMuA/s1600-h/Japan+195.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6K7Mu5N16CXjKY3XRlSucyeeNaOf-wWWtVDx_kuOaHWiGaXx_vfCrVjkEA4Di5gFiRzQ0ySruXvLP-SVKy7Ornytksbv2V3jKIhwcL0K6F216KsCs-tPj_fPgwKN9yZBgDazilYPPMuA/s200/Japan+195.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188564507448214626" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">housed in an old farmhouse in Nara, just inside the main park. I opted for the private dining room, which costed an extra 1.000 yen and it was well worth it. After all, 1.000 yen is only roughly 6 Euro and that doesn't even count as a tip in most restaurants in London. The meal starts with a <span style="font-style: italic;">sakizuke</span>, </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">a morsel </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">of exquisite bean curd and gingery radish meant for cleaning your palate. Then came the <span style="font-style: italic;">hassun</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">mukozuke</span>, a combined course of strikingly-presented sashimi with a curious bowl of mixed wild ferns harvested from somewhere in the mountains. Then came the <span style="font-style: italic;">futamono</span>, a lovely piece of fried bean curd that has been simmered in stock and served with an unusual dashi sauce. This was followed by <span style="font-style: italic;">yakimono</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">kono no mono</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">tome-wan</span>, respectively some grilled river bream, a beautiful selection of unfamiliar but delicious pickled vegetables and an elegant miso soup. All too soon, came the <span style="font-style: italic;">mizumono</span>, a suprisingly unflattering and unexpected strawberry mousse. Overall, it was a wonderful introduction to the world of <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>and the lunch was well worth the 4.500 yen. More pictures can be seen <a href="http://www.myprivatejapan.com/nara/uma-no-me">here</a>.</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The next <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Grotto </span>in Kita-Shiragawa in Kyoto, </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">a place easily reachable by bus, which is just as well as</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> few taxis seem to prowl around here. This <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>is run by an affable and friendly cook, Takada Shinichiro, who has worked in New York and Australia, and he did <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">all </span>the cooking in front of the diners, which were seated at a square bar around his rather efficient little kitchen area. </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcAi1T7bYP0B2UJlxLfeL6-tmiMz4_Mfu2cgEOJ4VmRgTB4MVqLFix7pp94XCLBatJcdkRWHD0bQALENR9hj9ZmlsCtppS5ecE8rscHArD0isAw92_DSca4cQsIxI3PAUhp_oVtBRNUY/s1600-h/Japan+246.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcAi1T7bYP0B2UJlxLfeL6-tmiMz4_Mfu2cgEOJ4VmRgTB4MVqLFix7pp94XCLBatJcdkRWHD0bQALENR9hj9ZmlsCtppS5ecE8rscHArD0isAw92_DSca4cQsIxI3PAUhp_oVtBRNUY/s200/Japan+246.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188577327925593202" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Mr </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Shinichiro's cuisine is rather upgraded for the 21st century and he has a less formal approach to the tradition of <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki</span>. He is also rather fond of scallops or <span style="font-style: italic;">hotate</span>, which is just fine with me! The <span style="font-style: italic;">sakizuke </span>is a little sashimi of salmon and firm white fish, beautiful in its sparseness and really makes one itch for more food. A lovely soup was served next, a delicious broth with scallop dumplings. Then the <span style="font-style: italic;">hassun </span>appeared, an enticing <span style="font-style: italic;">hotate </span>and flounder sashimi, followed by the <span style="font-style: italic;">futamono</span>, a thickish soup with a slice of monkfish wrapped in a sakura leaf. The main <span style="font-style: italic;">shiizakana </span>then appeared, consisting of tempura and various kinds of grilled fish and vegetables. This was exquisite in its simplicity and taste. A <span style="font-style: italic;">naka-choko</span> followed next, a rather </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">overly thick version of <span style="font-style: italic;">chawan-mushi</span>. Then came some salad speckled with sesame dressing and served with a small piece of grilled fish. The <span style="font-style: italic;">tome wan</span> was a rather curious rice ball floating around in a cornflour-thickened clear miso broth. Finally, the <span style="font-style: italic;">mizumono </span>arrived and it was unexpectedly simple and bland - chiffon cake, some sweet bean paste and peach sorbet. Again, it was a lovely and interesting experience of a new style of cuisine and was well worth the 4.500 yen for the dinner. Pictures can be viewed <a href="http://www.myprivatejapan.com/kyoto/grotto">here</a>. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Emboldened by my previous <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>experiences, I headed out finally for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Doi</span>, widely considered to be one of the best <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>in Japan. It is located in a hidden spot, uphill in the Kodai-ji Temple complex reachable from the Gion temple in Kyoto. This place does <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>for no less than 25.000 yen per person, but fortunately, there is a cheaper option where one can have the same food for half the price, as long as one does not mind sitting on chairs at a dinner table (instead of tatami mats) and being served by apprentice geishas. The restaurant itself is rather surprising, in that one has to take an electric lift to the 3rd floor dining room. It seems that tradition here stops on the ground floor </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtG1uFk1jKDTEkPE7NUKfX-1SkIpLR9GblF92apEj6VpxQgaKx1774lZ3BjQ67Sh_4UZOlU_dELScTkYuKEzVvluF2GBMmqdEELuPWXAOn99F37D5Ve3Qix-c0kWrOm3XzeUFyAFCyKvE/s1600-h/P4060709.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtG1uFk1jKDTEkPE7NUKfX-1SkIpLR9GblF92apEj6VpxQgaKx1774lZ3BjQ67Sh_4UZOlU_dELScTkYuKEzVvluF2GBMmqdEELuPWXAOn99F37D5Ve3Qix-c0kWrOm3XzeUFyAFCyKvE/s200/P4060709.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188580089589564546" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">but I didn't mind as the view was superb and somehow captures the essence of modern Kyoto.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>here would never be accused of being ungenerous for I ate here as much as in both previous <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>combined. Fortunately, I had a loose pair of trousers and a lot of willpower. The meal kicked off immediately with the <span style="font-style: italic;">hassun</span>, various pickles and bracken fern on a gluey paste of wild yam, accompanied by jellied abalone. A very interesting combination indeed, especially the yam paste which pretty much had the structure and texture of mucus. Next was the <span style="font-style: italic;">futamono</span>, a broth of mushroom, abalone and fish, which tasted luscious. This was followed by a <span style="font-style: italic;">mukozuke</span>, a huge platter of sashimi, wonderfully fresh and bountiful enough to warrant loosening my belt a notch. The strangest course appeared next, an overcooked, rather rough-tasting lobster served with some seaweed. I cannot really say that I enjoyed this dish as the lobster was at least 10 minutes or more overdone, and hence it had lost its texture and much of its natural sweetness. Still, the <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>pressed on with the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >shiizakana</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">, </span>a triple whammy of grilled duck, broiled fish and a chowder of baby clams cooked in what appears to be brown miso. This came with the <span style="font-style: italic;">gohan</span>, a rather simple rice bowl mixed with fresh peas and a tray of pickled vegetables. All was rather palatable, especially the duck and even the green-tea coated fish was better than I had feared. As usual, the meal ended with a rather insipid <span style="font-style: italic;">mizumono</span>, basically just some sliced chilled tropical fruit. Was it worth 12.500 yen for this lunch? Well, I have to say that I am no <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>expert but somehow, I found Doi rather formulaic. The food was never less than well-done and well-presented, even delicious in most part, but it seemed to have been prepared without a lot of passion or delight - my lunch felt a little like a task that had to be done by someone following a formula. This is a top-class restaurant, of that there is no doubt, but I would suggest to please don't make Doi your first <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>experience. There are other <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>with more tradition, flourish and atmosphere to sample beforehand. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Some pictures of Doi are on <a href="http://www.myprivatejapan.com/kyoto/doi">here</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />But would I like to have another <span style="font-style: italic;">kaiseki </span>again? Sure, of course, if someone wants to buy me dinner - anytime! :o)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span>Chris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-21519065028512514782007-03-19T16:58:00.010+01:002010-04-11T19:03:09.930+02:00Dinner Club in San Sebastian, March 2007<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVqAInOh0loZZZG8aGNVnLZ1sXFQwLbgSxQNb7x9jmYl2XjAGU8Ct-TKhOHkGeeaH0YLU0qq_xX8qCOMJvGzMu5l1p7oFvtc9Imep876wbZrN2nJbbK1pw3ygnHiqiO-fBaYXHMtgzlc/s1600-h/P3150032.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVqAInOh0loZZZG8aGNVnLZ1sXFQwLbgSxQNb7x9jmYl2XjAGU8Ct-TKhOHkGeeaH0YLU0qq_xX8qCOMJvGzMu5l1p7oFvtc9Imep876wbZrN2nJbbK1pw3ygnHiqiO-fBaYXHMtgzlc/s200/P3150032.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190497646458340498" border="0" /></a>Firstly, I would really like to thank Sylvia, Veronica, Yulia, Andrea, Ruth, Patti and Peter for joining me in San Sebastian. I truly hope everyone had a good time and enjoyed some culinary experiences that they will never forget. Right now, I am writing this in my apartment in San Sebastian mulling over what to do for dinner. Shall it be a jamon iberico pintxo or two at the new Bideluze at 24 Garibal Kalea or the stuffed baby courgette pinxto in Martinez in the Parte Vieja? Or perhaps the signature dish at Iombi (if they bother to open tonight)? It's a tough decision, and I have to make more hard decisions for lunch tomorrow before I leave. Oh well...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, here's the story so far. We met up on Thursday with Veronica at Stansted on the way to Biarritz via Ryanair. Trust me, if there is any other airline you can use rather than Ryanair, then use them instead. From Biarritz we hopped on a couple of trains and were in San Sebastian within an hour or so, mainly due to some lucky<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEZqHm-hVFRTE6NAKiZhx-hlr5TIJgSBZ7sz1HvHFaUY_uBDGKl9fXW6Jq2XhM4Y6czZPK84OmfBLxYjBHlAL0tVkuRjA8a9MddJiBTs4hUX2_IBOl5Mkl6D-35dFbuotDzucPgh1_q0/s1600-h/P3160041.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEZqHm-hVFRTE6NAKiZhx-hlr5TIJgSBZ7sz1HvHFaUY_uBDGKl9fXW6Jq2XhM4Y6czZPK84OmfBLxYjBHlAL0tVkuRjA8a9MddJiBTs4hUX2_IBOl5Mkl6D-35dFbuotDzucPgh1_q0/s200/P3160041.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190498402372584626" border="0" /></a> train connections. Yulia came in via Bilbao and together we all set off for an impromptu pinxto crawl around 21:00. First stop was <span style="font-style: italic;">Rojo y Negro</span> around the corner from the seafront. Some magret and foie pinxtos washed down by a glass of red wine hit the spot before we strolled over to <span style="font-style: italic;">Antonio</span>, where we had some jamon iberico floating on top of hand-made potato crisps and a plate of chopitos (baby deep-fried squid). Feeling less anxious about dinner now, we made the effort to stroll over to <span style="font-style: italic;">Alona Berri</span> in Gros, where we had countless numbers of their sublime pinxto creations. This is the bar which tends to win the annual pinxto competition. Sated, contented, chilled out, we moseyed back via a jazz bar and then to sleep.<br /></div><br />Next day, we met up at noon, and first stop was <span style="font-style: italic;">Iombi </span>in the Plaza de Gipuzkoa. This place opens and closes when it feels like and it was a rare privilege to catch them not only open for business but in top form as well. Their signature dish is also called Iombi, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaes392WCdLtIE3n_aLB-T2pMXWRUNGX2SIS2Fpw2sxN3MwXGQdyICxpoEwhfue7zXs9STs1NcSMuymLvYTwIs0pB0RsA8A2sB_OjhB-n2pOeG31_iguWPSmGYROK5CPw_TC8FN4hZSuY/s1600-h/SS+038.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaes392WCdLtIE3n_aLB-T2pMXWRUNGX2SIS2Fpw2sxN3MwXGQdyICxpoEwhfue7zXs9STs1NcSMuymLvYTwIs0pB0RsA8A2sB_OjhB-n2pOeG31_iguWPSmGYROK5CPw_TC8FN4hZSuY/s200/SS+038.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190498934948529346" border="0" /></a>and is a porcelain spoonful of foie gras on top of an olive oil and port sauce, topped with a raw pigeon egg. The trick to eating this is to pop the whole spoonful into your mouth, munch once or two, and then press your tongue up against the roof of your mouth. The experience is spiritual - no other word comes close to describing it. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrvQM99vhLKV96M7WvjO6ENuLJ6zbmspI3PIWq4cP6lO_lVuk6ZffLkNIyXyfhqbXJ8IvijfRMPASSUiIb8bROC9W09uIEyrtXxUmSx06Cvn5qju9Z8ha_PzIE0lFTxwOsXz3h1HQv13E/s1600-h/P3160119.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrvQM99vhLKV96M7WvjO6ENuLJ6zbmspI3PIWq4cP6lO_lVuk6ZffLkNIyXyfhqbXJ8IvijfRMPASSUiIb8bROC9W09uIEyrtXxUmSx06Cvn5qju9Z8ha_PzIE0lFTxwOsXz3h1HQv13E/s200/P3160119.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190499227006305490" border="0" /></a>Next stop around the corner was <span style="font-style: italic;">Meson Martin</span>, which does fantastic tortillas and grilled black puddings, and when we were finally stuffed (again), we sort of wandered over to visit Mont Igeldo via the funicular train. Then after some pictures, we came back down and hiked around the corner to the Chillida Leku sculptures and the hissing sea holes which blow air and water up your trousers if you are not careful! Really. San Sebastian is<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>sort of place.<br /><br />For Friday evening, we had a local friend, Manuel, very kindly come round to show us the Parte Vieja properly. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbM6NmPqL8lSs0V5fdfw9UESz5CmiSPLigXAuuAnScZBy0iMU6VKpXa4hmpixzFvdj9N7E5V8VI8sEOxgt2yTSRjF-XJMWI4NaMtB_ufnapHOcGj1P83LhGAIb99ZEr8p_CpGehkUxfa4/s1600-h/P3160181.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbM6NmPqL8lSs0V5fdfw9UESz5CmiSPLigXAuuAnScZBy0iMU6VKpXa4hmpixzFvdj9N7E5V8VI8sEOxgt2yTSRjF-XJMWI4NaMtB_ufnapHOcGj1P83LhGAIb99ZEr8p_CpGehkUxfa4/s200/P3160181.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190499480409375970" border="0" /></a>(We do things properly in this little club.) Andrea and Ruth had made it by then and they happily joined us as we sojourned through the lovely old town with Manuel explaining the history and architecture of the town. Apparently, San Sebastian did really well when they backed Queen Isabel against some rough-smelling Spanish lords and when she finally won, she bequeathed a lot of favours to the town, which started its eminence in Northern Spain. Manuel also forced us to sample several of his favourite (and fantastic) pinxto restaurants (where the rule was to have only 1 or 2 pinxtos before the next bar) and the ones I can remember out of the 6-7 places are<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKOpi4JNkYY9wFf5sH5Kf5ryd9NZ-_b6lEnaRyQ_Rd4Us26nCdbcgUcBKDQDhLu9anbxKr46yTtrf2T3hxSDF_EcLxA6jnTsNj7jHy50olXeJxh33GwcZp9jWwVUQX8cMg4TQBXCfk59s/s1600-h/P3160180.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKOpi4JNkYY9wFf5sH5Kf5ryd9NZ-_b6lEnaRyQ_Rd4Us26nCdbcgUcBKDQDhLu9anbxKr46yTtrf2T3hxSDF_EcLxA6jnTsNj7jHy50olXeJxh33GwcZp9jWwVUQX8cMg4TQBXCfk59s/s200/P3160180.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190500219143750898" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Txepetxa</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Muntos</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">La Cuchara de San Telmo, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Martinez </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Goiz-Bargi</span> where we had to very understandably prise Veronica away from the corner of the gambas grill bar. I say understandably as I was there in the same position before and I wouldn't have moved even if they had a Scud missile warning. There was also one that specialises in grilled fresh anchovies (I can recognise the place but not remember the name) and I never thought anchovies can taste so good! Fortunately, Patti and Peter had also made it into town just after the start of the tour and they met us up at Martinez, where Peter did his valiant best to make up for lost time. At the end, I somehow found my way home (we had a glass or two of wine at <span style="font-style: italic;">every </span>pinxto bar, remember) and I vaguely recall that a few people then headed off for a disco that evening.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg1DX8TE49aeULd305tEZFQr4GrpO26r_iFl3VRLOv79zqSNXnnBnmhsn0AWNmSwsTigPBkYzswk0Pv4k4lMCnHVPum9YzFyj_llesYVJ7QDjL5px2d9cUpPnqEfwnanRjugsMgbx-A70/s1600-h/P3160160.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 131px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg1DX8TE49aeULd305tEZFQr4GrpO26r_iFl3VRLOv79zqSNXnnBnmhsn0AWNmSwsTigPBkYzswk0Pv4k4lMCnHVPum9YzFyj_llesYVJ7QDjL5px2d9cUpPnqEfwnanRjugsMgbx-A70/s200/P3160160.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190500730244859138" border="0" /></a>Saturday lunch was a, er, well, rather haphazard Spanish event, and somehow we had managed to upset the waitress in the restaurant which some Spanish friends, Augustina and Pepe, took us to. It was precariously poised for a moment or two whether we will all get to have lunch, but in the end all was well. Food was not that great, to be honest, but it was a very typical Spanish meal, just for a contrast. In the afternoon, everyone did their own thing and we only gathered again around 20:00 to take the bus to Lasarte and Martin Berasategui.<br /><br />Regarding Saturday's dinner at Martin Berasategui, all I can say is that <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK53dqMOi3Dobi8X1JWHrTLAPxwlv1_yoBwQkjvaAZwoOBhgp4gEWoRctkzt4RHs7Bw75BxwVS21AOVnuiA8WNlwnAz_cnA_PNb3V0JDHjpzFSpgv5DF0LsSwPRSfZJyrEM3uz6dCiBqc/s1600-h/P3170337.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK53dqMOi3Dobi8X1JWHrTLAPxwlv1_yoBwQkjvaAZwoOBhgp4gEWoRctkzt4RHs7Bw75BxwVS21AOVnuiA8WNlwnAz_cnA_PNb3V0JDHjpzFSpgv5DF0LsSwPRSfZJyrEM3uz6dCiBqc/s200/P3170337.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190501245640934674" border="0" /></a>it was, for me at least, an almost transcedental night. Where can I start? It was just 10 courses of genius cooking. At the end, people were trying to figure their favourites out of the courses, but to me, they were all simply divine. I think that I will just let the <a href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery/mar07">pictures </a>do the talking for this dinner as I hate to sound gushy. Oh, and we were very fortunate to find a lovely Rioja to match the dinner, a <span style="font-style: italic;">Marques de Risqual 2002</span>. It was a superb wine, which matched the dinner well and was not too expensive (unlike the dinner)! It was definitely a night which one will remember for a very long time.<br /><br />Sunday lunch at the sidaria was completely the opposite end of the culinary spectrum. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDdu6UpJ-jC7hSG7V7wRqjq74k32idaPEmYLOk8sEo-N9lv0wY4S9peImKtw4c93S7KKmpgDF5PFTR7-8ylgz1xr9B3R7-sVXzoumD8CfezdIJ1NmujYxRIjCs8A__BQRV1BuEUnZULtY/s1600-h/P3180375.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDdu6UpJ-jC7hSG7V7wRqjq74k32idaPEmYLOk8sEo-N9lv0wY4S9peImKtw4c93S7KKmpgDF5PFTR7-8ylgz1xr9B3R7-sVXzoumD8CfezdIJ1NmujYxRIjCs8A__BQRV1BuEUnZULtY/s200/P3180375.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190501615008122146" border="0" /></a>Whereas we had designer plates and servile waiting staff the night before, at the sidaria, we had to fetch our own drinks and the food was more or less eaten with our hands! But it was about as much fun as one can have with clothes on. We started with a lengthy bus trip from San Sebastian to some village called Astigarraga and and the dining hall is the canteen used by the sidaria's workers in summer. This particular sidaria is actually a working apple farm and they do these special meals only outside of the apple growing/cider making season. The first course was a simple salted cod omelette, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoXtznrSu1__VmdMZWxAakDVpRfYl7u_v7QW-CFGCuoKEhl8nQWeV6_RX0HKIiZdbqje3qWsUEcqxZAonS_j6-BzMgpWZRyzFTSixAyN69Z23Sch95aBV7DRpGz-X9-BNH_F81Ta-CSw/s1600-h/P3180405.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoXtznrSu1__VmdMZWxAakDVpRfYl7u_v7QW-CFGCuoKEhl8nQWeV6_RX0HKIiZdbqje3qWsUEcqxZAonS_j6-BzMgpWZRyzFTSixAyN69Z23Sch95aBV7DRpGz-X9-BNH_F81Ta-CSw/s200/P3180405.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190502087454524722" border="0" /></a>followed by baked cod and then followed by slabs of the most delicious grilled beef in Spain. We even ordered an extra slab of beef, as it was just <span style="font-style: italic;">soooo </span>good! Dessert was Spanish cheese with sticks of apricot jelly and walnuts which you crack open yourself. Most fun was catching the cider as we squirted streams of dry cider straight from the barrels onto the floor. The trick is to get as much air as possible into the cider before knocking it back as quickly as possible. And the trick is definitely <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not </span>getting cider all over your clothes and shoes, like Yulia.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigeBCNcA9Uh4e5gaUZ3vysJU8xoGLw8Y7iqQRouxRVL6dcdjYRYbbfGLxpIvL2ZO8ioDnKMOoJ6p0gzcdTCyhakaYzCy5udWH8HN3qaeseYTDwuKmqyPWhP02DZGrqRfvpmw1ua2EKj3U/s1600/SS+014.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 91px; height: 122px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigeBCNcA9Uh4e5gaUZ3vysJU8xoGLw8Y7iqQRouxRVL6dcdjYRYbbfGLxpIvL2ZO8ioDnKMOoJ6p0gzcdTCyhakaYzCy5udWH8HN3qaeseYTDwuKmqyPWhP02DZGrqRfvpmw1ua2EKj3U/s200/SS+014.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458925939643031938" border="0" /></a><br />After such a lunch, the evening was understandably muted, and some of us met up in a bar and then just moseyed over to <span style="font-style: italic;">Gandarias </span>for a few glasses of <span style="font-style: italic;">Be</span><span style="font-style: italic;">londrade y Lurton</span>, arguably the best white wine in Spain. This was followed by a red <span style="font-style: italic;">Marques de Vitoria 1998</span> which was unfortunately served straight out of the bottle but nobody spat it out, even though it was not decanted. We wandered back via the Dickens Bar where someone had a very serious gin & tonic.<br /><br />Monday is when everyone deserted San Sebastian for various reasons, mostly to do with work, apart from me. As I said before, I do things <span style="font-style: italic;">properly</span>. So here I sit, writing this little diary and amusing myself with what I shall have for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. Perhaps after reading this, you can now understand what a dilemma I have on my hands here.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Monday night notes</span>: Well, eventually hunger overcame me and I was forced to set out to find<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyNYGwpwdP2ORpPUusm0oL2Kx_9_YpzpIahLnvUipcdz45r7AfnZw4OnkDjIKf2C_XQmNU-uwGmuOWV4ej0A-tOrxdVcsSucuPQZiD1A73bFRV46eDxHw_s1_Y-5qRdyuj5_vZ2q_-xg/s1600-h/SS+011.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyNYGwpwdP2ORpPUusm0oL2Kx_9_YpzpIahLnvUipcdz45r7AfnZw4OnkDjIKf2C_XQmNU-uwGmuOWV4ej0A-tOrxdVcsSucuPQZiD1A73bFRV46eDxHw_s1_Y-5qRdyuj5_vZ2q_-xg/s200/SS+011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190506528450708914" border="0" /></a> some food. To be honest, Monday night is not the best night for culinary hunting in San Sebastian as many restaurants are closed this night. However, I managed to struggle through and here is a simple guide to how to survive a Monday night in San Sebastian. First, you need to quench your thirst and the best place to do this is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Taberna Gandarias</span> where I sloshed out a glass of <span style="font-style: italic;">Senorio Andion</span>. Listen - if someone pointed a gun at your forehead and forced you to drink a glass of <span style="font-style: italic;">Senorio Andion</span>, well, all I can say is that things could have been a lot worse. I had an insipid dish or two here as well, nothing to write home about, although the consomme was light and refreshing. But next stop was <span style="font-style: italic;">Martinez</span>, where they had delectable "souffles" of wrapped baby courgettes with seafood stuffing. They also had other very good pinxtos as well, including seafood layered raw scallops and thin bread sticks with lines of iberico ham and I can remember vouching for those as well. That was almost enough but unfortunately I passed by <span style="font-style: italic;">Egosari</span>, who do the most delicious moist grilled <span style="font-style: italic;">spiesses (</span><span>or </span><span style="font-style: italic;">kebabs)</span>. So I had a couple, as I was not a rude person. They even had lovely-looking iberico ham pinxtos topped with lightly-fried pigeon eggs but I refused them, such was my will. So, I was now heading back home, minding my own business, when the barman at Meson Martin winked me into his bar. I'm usually a fussy person, but when he pours a well-aerated bottle of Marques de Vitoria and serves me fried aubergines with tomato, ham and cheese filling, then even I may get persuaded. Also, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEhQxtp-LKKv7amzjANnndqf7WgMlbCQH37pDliH6nr-7DUuFVaiC4Db3aGHF5c9rLXyuYQp7ylCeYCPAFa7jiBt1t1zkjq3YV7WXsdNr1W5qQFVkuqN9ODOP1cxeYT_qA5BboBeJRU4/s1600-h/SS+029.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEhQxtp-LKKv7amzjANnndqf7WgMlbCQH37pDliH6nr-7DUuFVaiC4Db3aGHF5c9rLXyuYQp7ylCeYCPAFa7jiBt1t1zkjq3YV7WXsdNr1W5qQFVkuqN9ODOP1cxeYT_qA5BboBeJRU4/s200/SS+029.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190504488341243250" border="0" /></a>believe or not, a hailstorm hit the town <span style="font-style: italic;">just </span>as I was walking by and if it was not destiny, I don't know what it was that forced me into this bar. Now thoroughly stuffed to the gills, I stumbled out and was saying the Lord's prayers when I saw that the idiosyncratic <span style="font-style: italic;">Iombi </span>was also open! Again, I stress that I am not a good contestant against destiny so I was compelled to crawl in and take a picture of an Iombi (something which I had forgotten to do before). But this meant ordering one and a degustif, so I did both. The only good news after this was that I did not have to pass <span style="font-style: italic;">Bideluze </span>on the way back to the apartment!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tuesday lunch notes</span>: I just thought that I would scribble these thoughts down just before I leave. Someone had (cruelly) suggested that I might have added on a few ounces during the last few days and suggested a walk to Gros for lunch. Well, I am game for this, despite the fact that it has <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOKySN1Pe8vi89euPV9hE8GrxQfRlfK7IiUoLfjTP1TElyBIRbEiCMiKQE-o0J32clEsLn9gSUTr1pB8BRfVroEkp9jxPNKDvP12n6P9AHCFuFWEeUuLKT00YbJHHNM593grFG86IDBM/s1600-h/SS+045.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOKySN1Pe8vi89euPV9hE8GrxQfRlfK7IiUoLfjTP1TElyBIRbEiCMiKQE-o0J32clEsLn9gSUTr1pB8BRfVroEkp9jxPNKDvP12n6P9AHCFuFWEeUuLKT00YbJHHNM593grFG86IDBM/s200/SS+045.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190505265730323842" border="0" /></a>been hailing and raining all day. All I forbade myself was another visit to Alona Berri as that would just mean that I would be there all afternoon. So the first port of call was <span style="font-style: italic;">Bergara</span>, the place where Juan Mari Arzak started his cooking career. It was not the worst decision of my life to come here and they really do things a little more elegantly and tastefully than the bars in the Parte Vieja. Also, one would have few arguments if one considered <span style="font-style: italic;">Bergara </span>to be one of the very best pinxto bars in town. A couple of Marques and few pinxtos later, I made the mistake of dropping into Casa Duran, where, although the fried stuffed aubergine was passable, it just did not <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlsJfIo_5kuKX8gWnzcxqry-Fh6UUw1IdbIEst-7knh4xMT3y8NwXBJ1WEKdNqtusywCop-acmxa-5OyabhgIPuniNPLVcKI5BqGdQgrjGKlgPLAAaSVKlcZQQzd8Z8_XZPD6-xt0iYw/s1600-h/SS+056.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlsJfIo_5kuKX8gWnzcxqry-Fh6UUw1IdbIEst-7knh4xMT3y8NwXBJ1WEKdNqtusywCop-acmxa-5OyabhgIPuniNPLVcKI5BqGdQgrjGKlgPLAAaSVKlcZQQzd8Z8_XZPD6-xt0iYw/s200/SS+056.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190505579262936466" border="0" /></a>compare to Meson Martin last night. The red wine was also pretty awful, so I really would not recommend this place. However, I easily made up for this mistake by sampling the numerous foie gras pinxtos at <span style="font-style: italic;">Bar Iraeta</span>, just down the road and opposite the front of the main church in Gros. This place specialises in foie gras and with that much foie experience under the belt, well, let us just say that it was a fitting end to my stay in San Sebastian, especially as the 4 pinxtos and a lovely red <span style="font-style: italic;">crianza </span>I had there costed less than 12 Euro in total!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">All the rather haphazard pictures I took in San Sebastian can be seen </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery/mar07">here</a><span style="font-style: italic;">, if you wish.</span>Chris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-61514196215207134322006-12-09T10:25:00.000+01:002006-12-09T10:48:19.047+01:00Sojourn through Malta, December 2006Due to some unavoidable circumstances, I ended up in Malta for a week at the beginning of December 2006. As usual, I did my usual research by simply asking a friend who has lived there for a year or so and her curt advice was generally not to bother unless I liked esoteric modern glass works, eating fish or drinking a lot, not necessarily in that order. However, in the end, things were not as dire as that and it proved to be quite an interesting visit to a place steeped in history, with lots of curious buses, bad roads, friendly people and quite surprisingly good food.<br /><br />The first thing one notices is that the Maltese tourist spots are rather like seedy versions of Brighton in England, or Zinnowitz in Ruegen, only bigger and warmer. However, the roads are invariably in a state of chronic disrepair and designed to twist the ankles of the unwary or test the suspension of your hire car. But the people are friendly, and even friendlier if you leave them tips. It is not unusual to have complete strangers "assist" you in finding a parking space and then holding a hand out for a coin or two. It seems that any Maltese can become a self-authorised parking assistant or tourist guide and they are generally so friendly that it seems impolite not to hand over a little silver every day to people who just loiter around car parks or tourist attractions. By the way, watch out for people selling you timeshares or excursion tickets. The timeshares are always ripoffs or scams and the excursions sold are not always for the specified time.<br /><br />Outside of the tourist spots, Malta is, well, different. The whole island is practically a walled fort and has been for centuries, and the Maltese still seem to like to build walls. All over the countryside are fields and orchards divided by walls and crisscrossed by more walls, all painstakingly assembled from large chunks of limestone or local sandstone. Why they like walls so much is a bit of a mystery and when they are not building walls, the Maltese are building little solid sandstone forts all over the countryside as well.<br /><br />Still, Malta can be very pretty and impressive, especially when viewed from the sea. Do a Captain Morgain excursion around the Grand Harbour and Marsamxetto Harbour to get a flavour of how stunningly secure Malta is as a fort and how beautiful it looks, especially in the sunset. The capital Valletta is a complete city within a fort, the only capital in the world to be such. More inland and on Gozo (an island north of Malta), one can find prehistoric hypogeums and temples that date back as far as 5,000 years BC, even older than the pyramids in Egypt. For a quick synopsis of what Malta is about, just attend the Malta Experience, an audio-visual show in Valletta, but it is also worth visiting some of the historic sites later.<br /><br />But I digress. This is a food site and I have to say that the food in Malta is quite tolerable, if not actually pretty good and nearly always amazingly cheap. For example, it is at Bobbyland at the Dingli Cliffs where I had the best rabbit ever in my life, a superb <span style="font-style: italic;">fenek </span>done with a fragrant garlic and wine sauce that complemented a supremely juicy whole wild rabbit. Normally I hate rabbit but Bobbyland had such a reputation that I had to try it there and I am so glad I did. Even the local red wine was quite tolerable and its dryness matched the rabbit well. My partner had <span style="font-style: italic;">bragioli</span>, which is a little like a rind rouladen but stuffed with local Maltese sausage meat. It was also very good, but not as good as the fenek. Both dishes together, including drinks, costed less than 25 Euro, by the way. However, a little warning is in order. I was later wandering around Valletta and was convinced by an earnest Maltese lady to try <span style="font-style: italic;">fenek </span>again at her "original" Maltese restaurant. The only differences I can find are (a) her version had potatoes boiled with the stew, and (b) it tasted horrible, exactly the dry grassy-gamy rabbit meat that I hate. I had to get out and (i) drink a coffee (ii) eat a vanilla cake and (iii) drink a milkshake, to get rid of the aftertaste.<br /><br />The normal Maltese breakfast, available practically everywhere, is the standard English fry-up; eggs, sausages, bacon, toast and beans, plus coffee, tea or fruit juice. It is somewhat better and cheaper than in England but the sausages, being Maltese, have a different taste and does not have so much rusk as in England. I rather like it but it is not something I can have every day. It is ridiculously cheap though, less than 5 Euro in general, and less than 2.50 Euro in some places!<br /><br />As fish is such a staple dish in Malta, for a true experience of it, I was recommended to Tal Familja in Marsascala. The <span style="font-style: italic;">lampuki </span>was out so I had to settle for <span style="font-style: italic;">cerna</span>, a lovely silvery fish with firm white meat, filleted beautifully in sauce meuniere with roast potatoes and steamed vegetables. I also tried the same fish at another restaurant near St Paul's Bay but it was not nearly as good, even though it was more expensive, although I guess that is to be expected.<br /><br />I was walking around Xemxija Hill one evening, which in the low season, is a dusty moribund district full of empty restaurants and bars and where the only people around are those scuttling away in cars. To my amazement, I saw a line of cars parked outside Zeus, a Greek restaurant that advertises a 10-dish meze for less than 15 Euro. So I strolled in and ended up having a surprisingly good meal of fried zucchini and charcoal-grilled <span style="font-style: italic;">kotixia </span>(quail) on tomato rice. Which goes to show that it is always a good idea to follow the locals.<br /><br />Because it looks so wholesome, one night I bought a Maltese loaf, a round crusty bread costing less than half a Euro. So here is a simple sandwich idea which will provide ample sustenance as a lunch or picnic snack: Cut 2 thickish slices of Maltese loaf. Spread 2 squares of French Kiri cream cheese on one of the slices. Layer 3 slices of Parma ham on top of the cheese and close with the other slice. And that's it! Great, especially when washed down with a beer.<br /><br />I also wandered over to Gozo, a smaller calmer island north of Malta. It's a pretty place, lots of greenery, agriculture and even nicer people. Here one can see the world's oldest upright structures created by man, a strange double temple where I guess prehistoric man used to have BBQs and chew the fat around muddy cups of grass tea after work or something. In Gozo, the centre of food is Xlendi and I was there especially to try It-Tmun, only to be annoyed and disappointed as we arrived 1 minute after last orders at 2 pm. Discussing this with the manager proved pointless so we repaired to Zafiro, a newish-looking place on Xlendi Promenade. This proved to be a very good move as they served a wonderful <span style="font-style: italic;">lampuki</span>, bordered by fresh mussels cooked in white wine. Despite looking a lot like mackerel, <span style="font-style: italic;">lampuki </span>tastes more like grouper, not oily at all, firm delicious white meat simply cooked in butter and garlic sauce.<br /><br />On returning from Gozo, we stopped at Arches in Mellieha, reputed to be the best restaurant in Malta. Perhaps I had raised the expectations bar a little too high, but for me, such a reputation would remain a subjective matter rather than fact. Saying that, the atmosphere and service is good, the decor is elegant and more classy than other Maltese places and the wine list was surprisingly good, with even Petrus available for around 1375 Euro a bottle. Yes, it is <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>sort of place. But, none of the fish was fresh and all the meat is not local either, with the lamb and beef coming from New Zealand and the fowl from other European countries. Oh well.<br /><br />We also had dinner one night in Bacchus, a huge sprawling restaurant that takes up a twelveth of the fortress town of Mdina. Passable food (but a little over-ambitiously creative), good ambience as the main public restaurant was located in interesting gunpowder vaults built in the 17th and 18th centuries, and nice friendly service. Definitely a place to sample if you are ever in Mdina but not worth a special trip just for the food.<br /><br />Pretty much all of my pictures taken in Malta can be seen <a href="http://www.familystuff.info/malta2006/">here</a>, and following are recommendations and some places where I have dined:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Zafiro, Xlendi Promenade, Xlendi, Gozo. Linked to San Andrea Hotel which looks a cool place to stay in Gozo.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It-Tmun, Xlendi, Gozo.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Tal-Familja, Triq il-Gardiel, Marsascala, Malta.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bacchus, Inguanez Street, Mdina, Malta.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Arches, Millieha, opposite Maritim Hotel, Malta.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bobbyland, Dingli Cliffs, Malta. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Best rabbit (fenek) ever.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It-Rizzu, near seafront, Marsaxlokk, Malta. </span>Chris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-9149512853496581442006-10-30T08:09:00.000+01:002006-11-16T08:07:46.616+01:00Advance news of March 2007 Trip to San Sebastian<span>Here is THE chance to experience a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience at the place where there are more Michelin stars per head of population than any other town in the world. For the March 2007 Dinner Club event, we are planning a full 4-day visit to San Sebastian, capital of the Basque region in Spain, and home to the finest restaurants and bars in Europe. You don't have to believe me - just read some of the links and attached reviews.<br /><br />Anyway, as this is an extended event, from 16-19 March 2007, there will be several options available, as follows:<br /><br />1. <a href="http://www.martinberasategui.com/eng/martin.php">Dinner at Martin Berasategui</a>, by far the finest cook I know in Europe. Apparently, even Alain Ducasse is <a href="http://www.euroresidentes.com/euroresiuk/spanish_restaurants/san-sebastian/barasategui-restaurant.htm">awed </a>by him and I can completely understand why.<br /><br />2. Dinner at a Sideria. This is a crazy, fun event which you really cannot afford to miss. We will go to an apple farm where they will serve a traditional 4-course sideria menu: 2 fish courses, 1 huge fantastic beef course and then finish with Spanish cheese and fruit. That's the boring bit. The fun part is the drinking of the sidra (or cider). Huge barrels of cider are opened to squirt cider all over the floor and you have to hold a glass out to catch what you want to drink from the stream of flying cider! Really. I cannot describe it but it is amazingly good fun, so you don't want to miss this event for sure.<br /><br />3. <a href="http://www.arzak.info/ing/home.asp">Dinner at Arzak</a>. This is a family-run restaurant which also has 3 Michelin stars and has been voted the best restaurant in Spain. Need I say more? However, if I had to choose between Arzak and Martin Berasategui, I would marginally prefer Martin.<br /><br />4. <a href="http://www.todopintxos.com/home/home.php?lang=en">Pinxto crawls</a>. This is another incredible fun thing to do, but I am afraid that one has to be a little restrained. Basically, San Sebastian has got more bars per square kilometre than any other place in the world. However, as I found to my cost, it is way too easy to fall in love with the food and the wines in the first bar you go into, so I will now warn everyone that they can only have 2 pinxtos per bar and a wine before we head off to the next pinxto bar. Trust me - you can thank me for this later. And there are different areas of San Sebastian which have their own style of pinxtos - my favourite is Aloña Berri in Gros. You might even get to find out why! And with several different districts to visit, one can never try them all.<br /><br />5. Whatever you like! There are so many cool places, even a couple of live jazz bars, that we can spontaneously pick what we like to do.<br /><br />The current plan, which is not fixed at all at the moment, is that we gather somewhere in San Sebastian around Friday, 16 March 2007, and then do a pinxto tour of the town that evening, just to get your palate started. You will not regret this. Then on Saturday, we will plan for a dinner at either Martin Berasategui or Arzak, depending on circumstances. For Sunday lunch we will literally splash around in the best sideria I know. Finally, on Monday, we might try pinxtos again in different parts of San Sebastian as most of the top restaurants are closed this day.<br /><br />I do not expect a lot of people to turn up, and even if they do, I do not expect everyone to last the full 4 nights as they may have to leave early for work or something. But what I do NEED to know now is how many people are interested in coming along, and for how long, so that I can make the bookings for the restaurants and suggest places to stay and flights and itineraries. Also, I am leaving the mornings and afternoons free so that people can do whatever they like, although everyone is welcome to hang out with me even though I am boring as mud. There are lots of things to do in the town (markets, museums, churches, aquarium, walks, shopping, etc), and many fantastic places to visit around San Sebastian, so I am sure everyone will have a good time. Using the buses is really cheap and easy, and the tourist office is also very helpful.<br /><br />Well, we have been talking about this trip a long time, and now it is finally going to happen! Believe me, this is not a cheap event, so I would budget for at least 300 Euro for the food and drinks alone. Accomodation might be cheaper if people would team up to rent an apartment and I will try to help with this. And then there are the flights (it might be cheaper to fly via London using Ryanair or EasyJet to Biarritz or Bilbao, and then taking a coach to San Sebastian).<br /><br />Anyway, I have already bought my flight tickets and will book an apartment soon. I will actually arrive on Thursday evening so as not to get too stressed out, and leave on the Tuesday and if you can spare the time, then I would suggest doing this as well, or preferably, stay even longer!<br /><br />So, let us see who likes good food enough to join us by sending me an email! :o)<br /><br />Oh, by the way, here are a few pictures I took the last time I was in <a href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery/ss/">San Sebastian</a>.<br /><br />Chris<br /><br />PS. Click <a href="http://travel.independent.co.uk/europe/article356391.ece">here </a>for a newspaper article about San Sebastian with tips about travel and accomodation. </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span> PPS. Another article in the UK press:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">By John Carlin, March 13 2005 Observer</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Further evidence that, never mind what Tony Blair might have you believe, the British are very different from the Americans was provided in a conversation I had with Gabriella Ranelli de Aguirre during a coff ee break at San Sebastián's sixth international gastronomy congress.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Gabriella, despite the name, is herself American. But she is married to a Basque, lives in San Sebastián and earns her bacon running what she calls 'culinary and cultural tours' in northern Spain. Sounds like hell, but she seems to make a decent living out of it.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Most of her customers are either American or British. 'The Americans are serious, hard-working tourists,' Gabriella observed. 'The Brits are more fun-loving.' Was she by any chance referring to the islanders' distinctly un-American national pastime of getting sloshed? 'Of course!' she said, smiling the complicit smile of the converted fun-lover. 'But that's not the whole story. The Brits have less need to go to the big-name restaurants than the Americans do. They enjoy going out for tapas just as much - maybe more.'</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Count me in with the fun-loving Brits. It's not that I distrust haute cuisine. It's just that in San Sebastián the quality of everyday grub is so remarkably, spectacularly haute already that it seems a waste to spend the night dining solemnly at a Michelin three-star when you can nosh it away in the city's magnificent tapas bars. The reason I was in San Sebastián in the first place was to see some of the world's most celebrated chefs performing at the gastronomy congress; the biggest event of its kind anywhere, I was reliably told. There's a reason why they hold it here. Spain is the 'in' place for the culinary elite these days, and San Sebastián is the best place to eat in Spain. The congress did justice to the city. The grand masters - Alain Ducasse, Ferran Adriá - put on a terrific show. Watching the extraordinary Adriá in action, freezefrying eggs in liquid nitrogen, was a mouthopening experience. But if the plan was to close your mouth around an item of food, then to savour and swallow, you were better off abandoning the centre where the congress was being held and diving into the nearest bar. Any bar.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On a previous visit to the city Spaniards consider not only the most elegant in the Basque country, but in the whole of Spain, I had formed the opinion that you could spend your entire life trying - and failing - to find a place where they would serve you a less than delicious piece of food.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Within minutes of arriving in San Sebastián, I put my theory to the test by walking early in the afternoon into the first bar that caught my eye. There was nothing remarkable about it to the eye. It was called Bideluze. It was what passes in San Sebastián for a local pub . And it was outstanding. The bar itself, la barra they call it, was creaking under the weight of plate after plate of delicious morsels, most of them astride a slice of txapata or baguette. They don't call them tapas here, though they know exactly what you mean if that is what you do call them. They call them pinchos. The Basque custom, observed in every single bar in the region, is to lay out assorted pinchos on the barra. What you do is ask the barman (it is not often a barwoman) for a plate, and simply load onto it the things you wish to eat. It is up to you to keep tabs of how many pinchos you've eaten; when the time comes to add up the tally and pay up, the barman will trust you not to have cheated.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Apart from the standard red pimientos stuffed with bacalao paste that Bideluze offered, apart from the plump, green Gernika peppers, the garlic-speckled anchovies in oil and vinegar, the chorizos, the cheeses and chicken croquettes, the bar also had quails' eggs and bacon, and a little dish known locally as mejillones tigres - tiger mussels. These are served hot on a large, flat seashell and covered with a thin crust of egg-fried breadcrumbs under which nestles a tangy little concoction of finely chopped mussels swimming in a creamy blend of olive oil, chile and bechamel sauce. As I scooped the shell's contents out and drank the fizzy rosé the locals seemed to consider the tigres' correct accompaniment (there was also Guinness and Murphy's Irish Red on tap), I saw a barman glide past. The plate he was bearing was dripping with the most wondrously marbled, acorn-oil-drenched slices of Jabugo ham - more evidence for the eyes of what was abundantly clear, that everything we were eating here was the freshest, finest quality produce. The proud locals would not have it any other way. Basques are exquisitely fussy about their food, especially the natives of San Sebastián. 'Try setting up an eating establishment that does not serve the freshest food, bought that morning in the market,' a friend there told me, 'and you'll be out of business in a week.'<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It is striking, this fineness of sensibility - the almost Japanese delicacy - the Basques have with their food. Because it is so at odds with the national character: they're a brusque lot, headstrong, easily angered. You can see where the fanatical nationalism comes from, the sheer madness - never mind the ETA terrorists - of that 50 per cent or so of the population whose voting patterns indicate they would like to secede from Spain.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Like many Catalans, only more so, this breed of Basque insist on seeing themselves as victims, on feeling aggrieved at the unfair treatment they receive from what they call 'the Spanish state'. And yet there is quite possibly no other group of people in Europe that enjoys a better quality of life. Such thoughts passed through my mind on a stroll along the arching promenade that lines San Sebastián's Concha, the city's beautiful beach, in the direction of my next pincho stop, Casa Gandarias, in the old heart of the city. I had not found the Gandarias in any tourist guide. Nor had it been recommended by any of the half dozen or so locals I was to consult during my stay in the city. (In fact, the locals seemed distinctly underwhelmed when I told them later that I had eaten there.)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The idea had come from a couple of friends of mine in Teddington, Surrey. Either the Teddington couple and I were pitifully easy to please, or the local experts were the most impossible snobs. I want to believe it is the latter. Because the truth is that during the hour and a half I spent at Gandarias I was in food heaven. It was 2.30 in the afternoon and the clientele were spilling out onto the street, it was so busy. I elbowed my way through to the barra, heaving under the weight of a tapas spread four times more abundantly than the one at Bideluze. The dishes that were not on display, because they needed to be cooked on the spot, were listed on a blackboard.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">By astounding good fortune I found myself an empty stool at the barra, summoned the nearest barman - big, bald, as gruff as it gets - and asked him if it was actually true, as another blackboard before me indicated, that Belondrade y Lurton white wine was available, 'by the glass'. 'That's right,' the barman replied, looking me menacingly in the eye, as if a bell were about to ring in the first round of a prize fight. 'Belondrade y Lurton, the finest white wine in Spain ...by the glass?' I repeated. 'That's correct,' my antagonist said, betraying, I thought, the faintest germ of pride; and maybe even a suggestion of surprise at this non-Basque barbarian's appreciation of the quality of beverage on display.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In either case, it was staggering to come across such a find in such a place, and a most eloquent expression of what is so special about eating out in San Sebastián. The most ordinary, everyday, humdrum of establishments serve food and drink of the standard you would expect to find in a restaurant run by the most lubricious maitre d', the most pompous sommelier. So I ordered a glass of Belondrade - made by a French couple in Rueda, an hour and a half north of Madrid, from the ancient Verdejo grape - and then some crab and octopus and prawns and some sizzling kidneys and a lamb brochette and black pudding (morcilla) with red peppers and the best, moistest potato omelette I've ever tasted and a few more slices of that glistening ham. You have to order ham in Spanish tapas joints if you want to be taken seriously.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ham - of endless quality and variety - is the great national unifier. It is what gives lie to the delusion the Basques - and the Catalans and some Galicians - have that they are culturally different from their Iberian neighbours. (The Portuguese are different, of course, because, among other reasons, for them it is cod, not ham, that is king.) There were also some quite spectacular pieces of dark red meat on show, available either in the form of a fat slab of steak or in choice little cuts delivered on a slice of crusty bread. My friend from Teddington had memorably feasted on a fat one. The best piece of meat he'd ever had, he said. But he was still digesting it three months later so I plumped for just the one little pincho, garnished to simple perfection with thick chunks of rock salt. The piece de resistance, though, was the foie, also in pincho form. Rinsed down with that liquid Belondrade bouquet, it was an Elysean excess.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But Belondrade wasn't all that was on offer - there were plenty of other terrific wines, too. There was also a range of Scotch whisky that beggared belief. The labels on the bottles were a Who's Who of single malt's finest: Ardbeg, Bladnoch, Caol Ila, Laphroaig, Inverleven, and more - further proof, if at this stage it were needed, that I had penetrated a superior civilisation. I stuck to another glass of my favourite Spanish white for my cheesecake dessert, delivered on a raspberry-lined, toothpaste-white oval plate. And that's another thing. Each dish had its own plate: round, square, triangular or oval, depending, as far as I could surmise , on whether it was fish, meat or fowl.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I rounded the meal off with a cortado coffee, which is an espresso cut with hot milk. I have had thousands of cortados but this one tasted better than any other . The rough enchantment of the place had got to me. During the whole 90 minutes I spent at Gandarias, I never ceased to be amazed and entranced by the fact that I was eating and drinking in a place as regular to San Sebastiánites as the local King's Arms is to the inhabitants of Stockton-on-Tees. Oh, and it all came to €30, including tip.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">'The secret,' Gabriella Ranelli reflected, 'is that they approach their food with so much mimo.' Mimo is what you do with babies you love. It means a combination of things, both abstract and physical. It means to cherish, but also to pamper, typically while making a tender cooing sound. 'That's how the Basques relate to food,' Gabriella continued. 'In the restaurants and bars it's not just about making money. It's about pleasing - and not just your clients, but yourself.' That is why even the wine glasses at Gandarias were of the finest quality. It isn't about money but about doing justice to a culture. There is a phenomenon in the Basque country known as 'la sociedad gastronómica' . It's a kind of club, usually based around a group of male friends who inhabit the same neighbourhood, in which people gather to discuss and cook food. The gastronomic society will have its own fully equipped kitchen and members will take turns to cook for each other.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Where, in other latitudes, people play golf or tennis or bridge, the Basque sport is cooking. An Andalucían friend who recently moved from Madrid to San Sebastián said he was surprised to discover a state-of-the art kitchen on the ground fl oor for the use of residents in the block of fl ats where he was living . 'In the block where I lived in Madrid we had a pool and a tennis court,' he said. 'Here - and it's the same in these kinds of places all over the Basque country - we have this great big communal kitchen.'<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The measure of how fanatical these gastronomic society people must be about their food was provided by a Basque friend José Luis, who does not belong to one. In fact, he told me, he's not very good at cooking at all. José Luis is in his forties and has a group of a dozen or so mates he has been hanging out with all his life. They have a number of rituals, the most solemn of which is that on your birthday you must cook a great big extravagant meal for everybody else. 'So you cook one, too?' I said. 'Of course,' he replied. 'But I thought you said you couldn't cook.' 'Well, I need a couple of days to prepare the meal, and I follow practically every step from a recipe book.' 'And you do this for a dozen people and you say that's not cooking?' 'No, of course not. Cooking is when I put three or four fresh ingredients in front of you and in an hour you've made a great dish out of them.' So there you are. As far as Basques who are not too fussed about their food are concerned, using a recipe book is cheating. The gastronomic societies have existed forever.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Perhaps the historical reason why they should have emerged in this part of the world in the first place has to do with the natural abundance of food. There is the sea (the Basques are fi shing folk by ancient tradition) and there is excellent agricultural land. Most of Spain is dry and brown but the Basque country is lush and green, with big valleys and gentle slopes that suggest the Swiss lowlands, but with more heat and sun. 'There are still lots of small farms and San Sebastián has more Michelin stars per head than any place on earth the quality of the produce really is fabulous,' said Gabriella, who has lived in the Basque country for 15 years and knows a fresh Gernika pepper when she sees one.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Talking of which, a visit to the main market in San Sebastián is the city's second obligatory tourist destination after la Concha beach. The fish counters are a pleasure to behold, but what will stay with me is the fragrant smell of the lettuce. Another reason why the food is so good has to do with the emergence 25 years ago of what is known as 'new Basque cuisine'. Its champion is local legend Juan Mari Arzak, who runs a three-star Michelin restaurant by the same name. Since then the sky's been the limit. As Gabriella says, 'In San Sebastián you have it all, the entire range - from the most avant-garde dishes you'll fi nd anywhere, to the best set-price lunches, to the best tapas; everything!' Ask the inhabitants of southwest France: they flock to San Sebastián, which they consider their food mecca. Actually, it is, in all likelihood, the best place to eat in the entire Western world. If you doubt it, consider this: San Sebastián, which has the same population as Stockton-on-Tees, has more Michelin stars per inhabitant than any place on earth. Fifteen, to be precise. 180,000 people live in San Sebastián, Spain's 27th largest city but the one with the highest property prices. That means one star for every 12,000 inhabitants. (London, with a population 200 times larger, has 34 stars.)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">'What the top restaurants do is raise the level of the ordinary eating place,' Gabriella said. 'But the great chefs take much of their inspiration in turn from the everyday places. One feeds the other, so to speak, and the public, who get accustomed to better and better food, become more and more demanding.'<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">One of the reasons why the gastronomy congress was held in San Sebastián is that it is the one place in Spain where the public can be relied upon to turn up in large numbers. These are people who save up all year to eat at Arzak or one of the other mega-star restaurants like Martin Berasategui, Akelare or Zuberoa, in the same way that people elsewhere save up for a holiday in Miami. So offering them a gathering of the cream of the world's chefs is like the Beatles coming to town.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The congress venue was a big, boxshaped convention centre by the sea known as the Kursaal, the kernel of which is a large amphitheatre used by symphony orchestras. It was standing room only in the amphitheatre when Ferran Adriá (who is to San Sebastián as David Beckham still is to Tokyo) did the first of his star turns. There were about 30 chefs in all - from France, Italy and the United States as well as Spain - who did half-hour presentations on stage of some of their favourite dishes, complete with live video connections to kitchens where their staff did the chopping and mixing. This was decidedly not for the housewife back home to imitate. It was - especially in the case of the show-offy Spaniards - the culinary equivalent of going to a wayout-there haute couture fashion show. In the case of Adriá, it was like his restaurant, el Bulli. It was beyond food, beyond eating. That was what I had been doing at Bideluze and Gandarias. This was pure spectacle. Virtuoso for virtuoso's sake. There was an elaborate machine that made mint juice, long syringes, odd Styrofoam contraptions, deep pots belching white smoke (this was the liquid nitrogen).<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The ingredients were eggs, asparagus, olive juice (green as pea soup), vinegar dust and raw powdered calcium. The point was to cook not by applying heat to the raw materials, but extreme cold. The end result was a sort of poached egg encased in a transparent asparagus gelatine. You cut through it and the yolk ran liquid as a fried egg's. It was a staggering spectator sport, as was the act of creation by which another playful Catalan, Joan Roca, made a brittle, see-through, balloon-sized orb densely packed with cep smoke. To 'eat' it, you crack the balloon and inhale. In between all this there was some delightfully simple stuff , like warm oysters with green apple juice. One of the French chefs (I think he was taking the mick) offered as his contribution a big fat roast chicken. An Italian made snails. An American chef cooked bread. The most notable difference between the Spaniards and the rest was that the Spaniards worked with the cool precision of laboratory scientists, or heart surgeons. In the case of Andoni Aduriz (the most avant of the avant-garde Gabriella was talking about) the analogy is not extreme. Every one at the congress I spoke to mentioned his name in hushed tones.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Thirty years old, Andoni - as everyone calls him, the same way Brazilians call their football superstars by their first names - is the boy wonder of global cuisine. (Well, actually, if you ask Ferran Adriá, the most interesting contemporary genius is Britain's very own Heston Blumenthal, but that's another story.) His special gift, I was told, is making foie. So obsessive is Andoni, who looks like Harry Potter, about this particular art that he frequented Spain's leading liver research hospital in Granada for a period of two years in order fully to grasp the ins and outs, the precise fat-protein ratio, the exact enzyme composition of the said organ.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">As a consequence he understands foie and can cook it better than anyone alive, gauging the different temperatures required at every forensically delicate stage of the coction process to a thousandth of a degree. I went to his restaurant, Mugaritz, in San Sebastián's mountainous southern outskirts, for dinner. I had the dégustation menu, each of a dozen dishes more minimalist than the next, and nothing to do with everything else that's going on in Spanish cooking. The Adriá school is exuberantly Dalíesque. Andoni is Zen austere. The first off ering, consumed in one gulp at the end of a very long spoon, was a sea anemone, a gooey grey thing whose naturally kidneyish, urine tang was helpfully off set by a hint of lemon.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Next up, raw thistle leaves with milk skin, garlic dressing and an olive infusion. Then herb salad and laminated mushroom followed by hay consomme and a morsel of sea urchin leavened with garlic and walnuts. A tasty little chunk of Iberian pig went down nicely after that, as did the scallop of foie, first roasted, then chargrilled and accompanied by a consomme of date pips . And so it went on. A Spanish food critic sharing the table with me noted that I was consuming rather more bread than one might ordinarily expect to eat at a top-of-the-range Michelin establishment, but the truth was that for most of the meal I was bloody hungry.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">'He takes risks, Andoni,' my dinner companion observed. 'He lives on a knife edge.' But, I asked, did he like Andoni's food? 'Look,' the Spanish gourmand replied, 'you either go along with this spiritual game of his or, frankly, you find him a pain in the balls.' A bunch of Catalan chefs at the table next to me who'd come along to San Sebastián to pick up some tricks at the gastronomy congress really got it badly in the balls. There were five of them, all good-quality chefs in their own right who serve straightforward fine food in a town on the foothills of the Pyrenees. After dinner I drove back with them to the city centre. They were indignant. Enraged. I couldn't print most of what they said but it boiled down to this: 'What a load of pretentious rubbish!' I said I tended to agree, while humbly acknowledging that if the cream of Spanish cheffery believed this guy to be the Picasso of his day, well, cubism was derided too when it first appeared on the art scene.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What was true, and where I entirely agreed with my outraged Catalan crew, was that I badly felt a need for one of those fat crimson super-steaks my friend from Teddington had gorged on. The next day my friend José Luis, the Basque who doesn't care about food, had us walk the streets for an hour before we found just the right place to have lunch. Asador Trapos, which dishes up traditional pre-nouvelle cuisine Basque food, was just what the doctor ordered. José Luis and I shared a plate of thick green beans with garlic and another of artichokes with clams, and then I had my longed-for half-kilo slab of red meat.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chuletón de buey is what you ask for, the literal translation of which is 'ox chop', but what it really means is beef steak. I loved the fact that the waiter did not even ask me how I'd like the meat done. He brought it blood rare, sprinkled with rock salt, and accompanied by a bottle of red honest-to-goodness Rioja. I kept going back to the congress, gawping at the cutting-edgery of it all, but it was Asador Trapos and the tapas bars I went to that will linger much longer in the mind. Take a place called Barandiarán that I popped into one morning for breakfast. Again, I had never heard of this place before walking in, again it was a regular everyday place with soiled napkins on the floor but the spectacle that awaited me at the barra was a feast for the eyes.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This being breakfast, they had held back on the kidneys and foie wasn't on the menu. Instead, among the self-service goodies on display were succulent pieces of cinnamon-coated French toast, smoked salmon, crabmeat and shrimp on toast and, of course, potato and onion omelette. The only juice available was orange, freshly squeezed, and the cortado coff ee was of a quality, as they say in Spain, to revive the dead. A tapas bar that the locals did recommend was Bar la Cepa, just down the road from Gandarias in the old quarter of San Sebastián, which is where most of the best pinchos in town are to be found. As far as I could tell, it was Casa Gandarias all over again, though (and the local experts will have to forgive me) not quite as fine.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The best recommendation was that four pinchos into my meal, Ferran Adriá walked in with his wife. It is the second time this has happened to me in a year, the first having been at a very hip tapas place indeed in Adriá's native Barcelona. I was struck by the fact that, on arrival, he ordered, as he had done the first time around, a large plate of ham. It is his antidote, you can't help feeling, to the elaborate intricacies with which he concerns himself in his day job. So, I asked Adriá, was San Sebastián the best place to eat in the world? My expectation was that he would cry 'yes', or make some sly remark along the lines that it was almost the best, after Barcelona. Yet there was not a tinge of patriotic prejudice in his reply. Quick as a flash he said, 'No. Shanghai is better. Maybe Thailand, too.' Shanghai? 'The variety and inventiveness is amazing.' And Thailand? 'The freshness of the produce is remarkable .' So was San Sebastián the best in Spain at least? 'Of course! What do you mean?' he replied. 'It's the best in Europe. The best in the West. No doubt about that at all. And if you push me, in terms of the average quality of the food, in terms of what you can get at any place you happen to walk into, maybe it is - probably it is, yes - the best in the world.'<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A (very) few interesting pinxto bars are as follows:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bideluze, Plaza de Guipuzcoa, 14, (00 34 943 422 880)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Casa Gandarias, Calle 31 de Agosto, 25, (00 34 943 428 106)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Barandiarán, Alameda del Boulevard, 38 (no phone)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bar La Cepa, Calle 31 de Agosto, 9, (00 34 943 426 394)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bar Astelena, Inigo, 1, 00 34 943 426 275)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Alona Berri, Calle Birmingham, 24, (00 34 943 290 818)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ganbara, Calle de San Geronimo, 21, (00 34 943 422 575)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Chris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-22846511646889426572006-10-28T15:53:00.000+02:002006-10-28T23:20:55.494+02:00Other dining places in BerlinThe best value-for-money dinner restaurant in Berlin, in my opinion, is the <a href="http://www.maoa.de/">Modern Art of Asia</a>, in Leipziger Platz 8 near Potsdamer Platz. The atmosphere is great, with cool minimalistic modern settings and a nice friendly (but a little slow) service. Go for their eat-all-you-can buffet at less than 20 Euro and sample some interesting food combinations, which <span style="font-style: italic;">you make yourself!</span> I won't say more except that it is definitely not traditional German cooking, but the place really does interesting food which you can vary yourself by changing the sauces. It is simply a great place to take friends and have a fun dinner. You can mention the Berlin Dinner Club there if you need a table when they are full. We did a dinner there <a href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery/aug06/">recently </a>so it might help.<br /><br />Earlier, I had forgotten to mention that the traditional Berlin signature dish is actually the Eisbein (pronounced <span style="font-style: italic;">Ice-Bind</span>). Lots and lots of places serve it, including some traditional breweries and kneipes (German pubs). It is actually the foot of a pig, boiled and served with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. Don't mix it up with Schweinehaxe, which is a ROAST foot of pig from Bavaria. Once a year, I force an eisbein down in places like the <a href="http://www.lindenbraeu-berlin.de/">Lindenbrau </a>or the <a href="http://www.10best.com/Berlin/Restaurants/Fine_German/index.html?businessID=23381">Grossbeerenkeller </a>(and am slowly getting used to it), but I guess it is something you can choose to try or not. It does not matter, unless you need the novelty value but if you like stodgy, filling food, it is really quite good and ridiculously cheap. Another very interesting dining place is the <a href="http://www.noctivagus.de/">Nocti Vagus</a>, but you might need nerves of steel although I think the food and dining experience is quite fun. Again, I won't describe the place as it is something you will either really find exciting, or make you run out screaming!<br /><br />Oh, how can I forget to mention the oldest restaurant in Berlin, which has served both Napoleon and Gobachev: <a href="http://www.zurletzteninstanz.de/">Zur letzten Instanz</a>. This is another cool place to try with friends and visitors to Berlin. Yet another must-do place in a city full of must-do things and places. Oh well...<br /><br />ChrisChris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4460448160708398417.post-83622383284248302022006-10-28T15:50:00.000+02:002006-10-29T23:26:12.679+01:00What to do in Berlin Xmas/New Year 2006/7<p>Well, the immediate "German" dinner event that springs to mind for a visitor would be the Medieval Knight's Dinner at the Spandau Zitadelle. The websites are <a href="http://www.zitadelle-spandau.de/Schanke_-_Biergarten/schanke_-_biergarten.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">www.zitadelle-spandau.de </span></a>and <a href="http://www.zitadellenschaenke.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">www.zitadellenschaenke.de</span></a> The atmosphere is great, food is excellent and copious and the wine is excellent (and free) and I always have a great time there. We also did a <a href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery.htm"><span style="color:black;">dinner club night</span></a> there on <a href="http://www.berlindinnerclub.com/gallery/apr04/"><span style="color:black;">April 2004</span></a> if you want to see more "real life" pictures of the place.<br /><br />But, saying that, the Spandau Zitadelle is probably well booked out by now. However, the good news is that Berlin is full of very good restaurants, and depending on the atmosphere and budget, one can have a very good time. If you must have German Xmas food, beware that the traditional German Xmas dinner is large slabs of goose, cooked in its oil and with lots of sauerkraut and dumplings. I personally hate it as it almost always makes me ill afterwards, but if you must do fowl, then I would suggest <a href="http://www.aigner-gendarmenmarkt.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Aigner</span></a> in the Gendarmermarkt (more upmarket) or <a href="http://www.restaurant-friedenau.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Restaurant Friedenau</span></a> (more traditional and cheaper).<br /><br />On the other hand, if you like gourmet German food, then please consider <a href="http://www.vau-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Vau</span></a>, <a href="http://www.vox-restaurant.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Vox</span></a>, <a href="http://www.facil-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Facil</span></a> or <a href="http://www.hugos-restaurant.de/news.php" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Hugos</span></a>. Not cheap by any means, but very, very good. The best German food is actually Alsace-German and the 3 best ones in Berlin are the <a href="http://www.restaurant-sankt-moritz.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Berlin Sankt-Moritz</span></a>, <a href="http://www.storch-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Storch</span></a> or <a href="http://uk.holidaysguide.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-230443-borchardt_berlin-i" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Borchardt</span></a> (Tom Cruise eats here). Do a Google search and you will find reviews about them. Great restaurants, great food and not too expensive (compared to London). <a href="http://www.vau-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Vau's</span></a> cook is Hr Kleeburg, quite a character if you get to meet him, Felix is the very knowledgeable sommelier at <a href="http://www.facil-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Facil</span></a>, and last year, I had my Xmas dinner at Vox. One of the top restaurants in Berlin, in my opinion, is <a href="http://www.facil-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Facil</span></a> but regrettably they are not open on weekends. Try also <a href="http://www.locationsite.de/berlin/gugelhofe.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Gugelhof</span></a>. President Clinton had dinner there once, so at least the politicians like the place. Angela Merkel's favourite restaurant is <a href="http://gastronomie.zitty.de/index.php?sub=shop&id=5696" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Chez Maurice</span></a> and her favourite dish there is the blutwurst which is a <i>great</i> dish, but, well, it might not be to everyone's taste.<br /><br />Note that Berlin dining has a different character to dining elsewhere in Germany, mainly because Berlin is so much more cosmopolitan. But if one wants other forms of German food, then you can also get Bavarian food (and beer) in Berlin as well. Try <a href="http://www.loewenbraeu-berlin.de/pages_eng/start.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Loewenbraeu</span></a>. For Schwabian food, it would be hard to beat <a href="http://www.minks-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Oma Mina</span></a> (or <a href="http://www.minks-berlin.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Mink's</span></a> as it is also called). Some members of the German football team eat here. Or try eating at a brewery. It's great fun and quite cheap as some places tend to serve food by weight so you can (should) never overdo it. There are lots of independent breweries in Berlin, some of them since the 16th century. A fine example is the <a href="http://www.luisenbraeu.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Luisen Brau</span></a> where you can order beer by the metre! A branch of a famous <a href="http://www.weihenstephaner-berlin.de/,eng/index.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Bavarian brewery</span></a> is also in Berlin. Or try something a little more afield, like Austrian food, in which case, you cannot beat <a href="http://www.ottenthal.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Ottenthal</span></a> in Kantstrasse.<br /><br />If you want to combine a show with the dinner, then one really should consider <a href="http://www.pompduck.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Pomp, Duck & Circumstance</span></a>. It is an unusual dining experience and something one will seldom see in the UK. It was pretty good when I was there but it would help if you speak German. The food is quite tolerable as with these sort of places but you go for the experience (and ignore the price). Another show-and-dine place is the <a href="http://www.wintergarten-variete.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Wintergarten</span></a>, but I have no idea what their current Xmas show is like as the last one I attended was 10 years ago. But I remember it was really pretty good.<br /><br />The best part about Xmas is actually the Christmas markets. You will probably know the main ones: Breitscheidplatz (near the Zoo), Schlossplatz, Gendarmermarkt, and Opernpalais (Unter den Linden) but I like the one at the old town in Spandau as well. It's a little cheaper and less "heavy commercial" but they are all very good markets where you can snack on half-metre bratwursts, bouletten and gluhwein. In Potsdamer Platz, there is usually Europe's largest artifical snow slope where you can slide down rubber tyres and play the original ice version of curling in the <a href="http://www.sonycenterberlin.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Sony Center</span></a>. Talking of the <a href="http://www.sonycenterberlin.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Sony Center</span></a>, there is also an English cinema there, <a href="http://www.cinestar.de/html/site.php?pgID=8&cityID=3#prg4" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Cinestar</span></a>, and you should see the <a href="http://www.sonycenterberlin.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Sony Center</span></a> roof at night after 8 pm!<br /><br />To check out locations, please use <a href="http://www.stadtplandienst.de/"><span style="color:black;">S</span></a><a href="http://www.stadtplandienst.de/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">tadtplandienst.</span></a> It's the best free map service in Germany. If you are staying a few days and moving around a lot, consider buying a daily ticket or weekly travel pass. The same tickets work for underground, overground, regional trains, trams and bus services so they are really good value for money but don't forget to stamp them at the stations or the buses. There is a tourist office in Tegel airport and the Europa Center near the Zoo where you can get free maps and brochures. Don't worry - Berlin is such a great city that you will never manage to do everything you feel like doing, so just get used to the feeling. I have been here 11 years and been around a lot and still there are things I have not managed to do yet and somehow, the list grows longer every year. :o)<br /><br />Hope this helps!<br /><br /><b>Chris</b><span style="color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Chris Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16826613536274384053noreply@blogger.com0