In Baster, the omelette has its own language
To the cry of “Un preparao!” the Baster bar mobilizes and begins with the highly secret formula of Bilbao's quintessential cocktail. If you ask, they will tell you that it has “snake eye and newt venom”. And you accept it because the concoction is one of the best in the capital and it's already twelve It is because of her marianito prepared that one wishes it was noon every time.
Others are added to that cry, and this bar's menu is enough for many proclamations. All written in a tiny kitchen in which they move agile Lluis Auget and Jon Abad, who back in 2015 made their corner of Casco Viejo the center of the pintxopotero pilgrimage.
It is a box of matches but it is enough for many fires. Enlivening them is Auget, whom I catch in a frying pan for his first squid sandwich of the day. Love robbed this Catalan chef of his orientation and he ended up looking out over the Bilbao estuary instead of the Cerdanyola del Vallès estuary where he was born.
That love did not materialize but what was going to be a temporary transfer “It has become that I have a business, a child and I am married. I lack the negative HR to be Basque”.
What did work was his omelette, which in Baster has its own language. When the fork slips and the turgid apotheosis oozes honeyed egg and potato, that language is at least universal. There is no mouth that does not understand it. And it's express, not because they do it quickly –which is also– but because They make it at the moment and in individual portions. One of apotheosis for each one!
Baster: the center of the pintxopotero pilgrimage
"IN HAUTE CUISINE YOU COOK FOR YOURSELF; WE, FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE TOWN"
Jon and Lluís met in the rows of Josean Alija's Nerua, the star-studded restaurant at the Guggenheim Museum. Jon in the room –first as a waiter, then as head of events in the museum and head of the room in the bistro–; Lluís in the kitchen –he had already passed through those of Quique Dacosta or Andoni Luis Aduriz-.
They got tired: “In haute cuisine they cook what comes from their soul: the sensations, the pincers, the herb. Nope. Here we cook for the people of Casco. And it's not an easy place."
High flights also touch down. And that cooking for others has resulted in a decisive bar of pintxos that wins with the portions made at the moment.
The Baster bar: to eat (and drink) Bilbao
Added to his mastery of the potato is that of grandma's meatballs –juicy balls that swim happily in tricky sauce– or that of the sandwiches and 'planchaditos' that they create seasonally, such as wild boar's head or pickled prey and cheese. Always with sourdough bread from the Bilbao Bitxibil bakery.
His salad is not Russian, it is 'boltxebike'; their patatas bravas are 'crazy', they lose their sanity in their sauce; the gildas of anchovies in vinegar join their army of pintxos even though they are conscientious objectors – like me, who prefer the anchovies.
Everything in Baster has a rogue edge that they don't bother to hide: “I'm a bit of a bastard” Auget confesses to me, “although always within certain limits: we want to have fun and entertain the customer”.
There is always a good reason to toast
A CORNER AT NOON
The good atmosphere overflows its square meters. Perhaps it is because in your premises there are no borders between kitchen and bar, between bar and dining room.
It is the same team that fries, salts, serves, mixes, pours, recommends one of its more than forty vermouth references –Auget here shoots home–, he sweeps and lowers the blind. The Bolshevik of his salad led, as could not be less, to his management of the premises.
“In haute cuisine you cook for yourself; us, for the people of Casco”
Its terrace is played by the agile and even more so when that ray of sun decides to sneak through Calle del Correo. The less determined in this of the strides were accommodated before – that pre-pandemic before – on the facade of the Ivañez Bilbao nougat shop.
The panorama was then a faithful reflection of the Baster card, in which the classic endures in modernity. Sometimes the hard part is staying simple.
The hosts of this modern tavern have found the formula to shake up all the sinuosity of the Bilbao street scene. The formula of their prepared marianito is kept under lock and key. And so it must be. “It is part of the magic of vermouth”, considers Auget. Also from Sunday, at noon.
A corner at noon