I love cheese cake , I look for it everywhere I go, the new york cheesecake, the classic, the Japanese, the salty, the one that is baked and the one that is left to rest in the cold, the one with a cookie base, the one that is decorated with a layer of red fruits and in which the cheese is the only protagonist...
But no, no matter how many I have tried (and many who imitate it), I don't know another like this : that of fismuler (Rec Comtal 17, Barcelona; Sagasta 29, Madrid). None has touched my heart in this way nor has it pushed me to write a love letter.
Fismuler restaurant cheesecake
I dream of her since the first day I got my hands on her: its creamy texture , its smoky flavor, that spread final on the plate and that spoon fencing war that you always have to deal with your companion (although, curiously, he does not declare himself a cheese fan) to hurry up until the last bite.
Since then it has been like a ritual. Every time I go I don't even want to hear about the other sweet proposals. I ask for it before even looking at the menu (a dollar bill under the napkin as an attempt to bribe the waiter) to make sure I will keep one of the precious ones (and few) portions and it will not be taken by any of the other diners in which now I only see the face of the enemy. They all look suspicious.
Nino Redruello , Fismuler's thinking head next to Patxi Zumarraga , he explains it to me: “The key is in the mixture of three types of cheeses ( fresh, smoky and blue ) and the trick to achieve that texture that makes it so special, almost as if it were a cake/cream, is not to let the egg completely set in the oven so that it is not completely cooked”.
Said like that, it seems as easy as kill her in three bites, but to get here, Nino worked like a true scientist, like a biologist cloning an endangered species, to create the ULTIMATE cheesecake : "with Smoked Idiazabal to give it more personality; with blues to achieve that umami that fills your mouth... with balance and smoothness: a cheesecake for cheesemakers ”.
The starting point was already a totem: that of Hilario Arbelaitz in Zuberoa (Guipúzcoa), that he learned to make Nino during his stage in the restaurant. For thirty days in his workshop, together with the pastry chef and eight other chefs, while they finished brushing up the Fismuler concept, they prepared a cake in the morning and another in the afternoon looking for the perfect recipe.
"Now try as many more minutes", then "raise the temperature a couple of degrees", then "lower the Idiazabal"... 30 days with its sixty cakes that all their families had for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, privileged guinea pigs.
The "Eureka!"? Came on repeat. When head after head nodded again, and tongue after tongue licked again.
The scene was immediately repeated in the restaurant. From the first day it was a complete success (today it is still the most demanded dessert) and they ran out , always leaving some orphan of his lot. "People would get angry if they didn't stay", says Nino, that's why now they do eight a day (two more than before), “which are prepared just before each service, without going through the fridge” . They are presented with pomp by the confectioner at each table and “ they are served at room temperature, so that it releases the right amount of fat and tastes like this... how it tastes ”.
Over time, the three years that Fismuler has been waging war, the recipe has evolved, updated, rounding up.
And, as with other dishes from any of its restaurants (La Ancha, Las Tortillas de Gabino, La Gabinoteca...), it has also been copied "by pirates" who have not been slow to arrive and do their thing (much of the blame has these declarations of love or the thousands of photos of her uploaded to Instagram).
So much so that Nino, obsessed with creating very personal concepts, even says: “They have copied us so much that it makes me want to remove it from the menu” . Let's hope it's a set phrase.