Johann Wald and other 'stagiers' from the Arzak restaurant
I insist on calling it an 'eating house' because I consider that its great virtue, ahead of the creative revolution What did it mean to stand up to the traditional basque cuisine with ideas fed by the nouvelle cuisine of Paul Bocuse around 76.
Beyond the kitchen, while other restaurants boast of interior design created by illustrious architects, personnel trained in the best schools or the growing your own ingredients , Arzak shines above all for his human team , in which there are employees who carry with the family decades. Some have been trained in cafeterias, others in hotels in San Sebastián, and some more, in the restaurant itself -in fact, the current pastry chef he entered years ago as a dishwasher.
The Arzaks maintain three Michelin stars since 1989 thanks to this combination of impeccable service, family treatment, an anthological cellar -with 90,000 bottles- and an avant-garde kitchen that does not ignore traditional dishes that make up the Basque cookbook.
Thus, if one does not feel seduced by the numerous wonders invented in the research and development laboratory -such as, for example, the lobster served on an iPad with images of the ocean - , you can count on the marmitako or the baby squid in its ink They never come off the chart.
Elena and Juan Mari Arzak working in the kitchen
There are people who take a plane to be able to test the kokotxas by Juan Mari, and I will never forget the moment when he came back from the cold room with a box full of ingredients, when Pello Aramburu, Arzak's chef for two decades, stopped me to try some that he had just emulsified with his own collagen and extra virgin olive oil in a hot clay pot.
Over there, sweating, with my touch blanche of paper stained with grease from last night's service crooked on my head and a little nervous about this unexpected surprise, I felt the same thing that child you climbed must have felt Bruce Springsteen to sing with him in a concert. I felt what it feels like to be 'The chosen one' . hashtag #thechosenone.
Two weeks later, I happened to be in the pass of the game of meat and fish, where I lasted three minutes under the surveillance of Pello, who did not miss one of the thirty cooks that he had under his command.
Apparently he called my attention to see if he was attentive to all orders and, while repeating in a low voice a mantra with the ingredients that he had the garnish that I had to serve so as not to forget a single sprout Petal, I didn't get to hear him, he got angry and he sent me to fry yuccas. I felt humiliated at the gaze of other practitioners, all ten years younger than me.
Literally the most severe punishment in Arzak was the damn fine strips of fried yucca. we got to be five cooks forming part of the process of preparing them: they had to reach the size of those mini post-its that are used to book page marking or a child's band-aid, and then place two delicate crunchy ringlets of the South American tuber in a dish whose protagonist was the grilled pigeon.
Five kids, all trained in cooking schools, prepared for landing in Normandy, trying to streamline a process there was no way to rush. Peel, cut into rectangular chunks, pass through the slicers , wrap around a metal cylinder and fry one at a time to check that they maintain the perfect spiral shape. Twenty minutes passed before I managed to cook one without it breaking.
Working in the kitchen of Arzak
The absolute creative freedom that they enjoyed Xabi, Igor and Mikel -the three ex-bosses of mega respected kitchens who worked in the laboratory - we confused it, at times, with desire for revenge about future generations of practicing chefs at Arzak. They were like the precognitive mutants of Minority report , but without being connected to a bathtub. visionaries, guided by the god of new basque cuisine , with a twisted sense of humor.
Many times I have ideas how to learn to fly without fuel or crystallize noisette butter without sweeteners, but I park them because they are unrealizable with the precarious resources that I have. However, having a mini army of talented minions available, the magnificent three will already have around four registered patents.
The first that I was surprised As soon as I joined this legendary restaurant, I received apron and clean rags It was freshly pressed in the laundry room that was next to the staff changing rooms on the first floor. They are returned after each service daily . That's how they spend it on a three stars, tea.
Professional cooks are trained to keep surfaces, spaces and refrigerators neat like a surgical operating room. Unfortunately, not everyone maintains such rigor with their uniforms , so this type of restaurant does not skimp on this expense, and more so when there is a private table inside the kitchen for distinguished diners, such as king emeritus , who came in for dinner that August in the company of his daughter Elena, his nephew Froilán and a sycophant delighted to laugh at all his majesty's thanks vehemently enough for hear him in the seats of the Kursaal.
Another thing that I can't help but brag is that for a month I ate twice a day at Arzak . Tuesdays always played lentils, the Wednesdays, pinto beans and on Thursdays, Aramburu pampered us with his rice with lobster . It is not that Juan Mari, the businessman, had lost his mind enough to give his fifty employees weekly a tribute of those that you hit the first Sunday of the month, but rather that every day they receive about forty units of the crustacean , of which they only took advantage tails and pincers for the letter.
Except on Thursdays, I watched with astonishment how heads were thrown in the trash. A few days after joining the team, I felt confident enough to question this waste , to which they replied that it gave more work and costs reuse them than to conserve them, prepare them and cook them for the staff.
That is, five guys to fry some strips of cassava, whose market value is not even a quarter of what a lobster is worth , and yet the lab had exhausted any aspiration of reinvent those heads like an amuse-bouche . Between genius and insanity there is a thin crispy strip of fried yucca.
Among all the exquisite market products that entered that kitchen daily, it struck me that only two of them passed through a low temperature cooking , so fashionable in avant-garde restaurants.
To Juan Mari, as a good Basque, he likes an iron more than a man from Madrid , and he only used a Roner -the famous thermostat invented by his friend joan rock Y Narcis Caner - to cook red peppers and eggs. anything else i had eyes, fins, or legs went through the plate. Including some stagier.
I was lucky to participate in the daily elaboration of the famous 'Space Egg' of Arzak, a clear example of what happens around simple ingredients to elevate them to supreme category. In a deep white plate, we painted edible three-color dots around the wing and placed three fried cubes of pig trotters , two pearl-sized balls of sautéed pumpkin with parsley, two leaves of a sprout, a teaspoon of red bell peppers cut into brunoise and the egg cooked 45 minutes at 63ºC, topped in a pan with oil, covered with a veil of red pepper and with a few drops of its particular white truffle oil and salt (black pepper is often treated as an intruder in the kitchens of Euskadi and is reserved, together with turmeric and garam masala, as an **exotic spice)**.
This plate, Favourite among the majority of the customers of the restaurant, in which they are involved at least seven cooks, goes out to 51 euros for sale to the public, VAT not included.
Arzak Space Egg
The kindness, generosity and good faith so characteristic of the Arzak was reflected in the overbooked by stagiers that his kitchen suffered, half as big as the dimensions of the one in the Cellar de Can Roca . When other restaurants refuse to accept more requests from culinary padawans for logistical reasons, Juan Mari is incapable of saying "no" to anyone.
And so it happens, that every week they appeared new faces with suitcases under their arms and return tickets to places as remote as Patagonia, where once they coincided with the affable Donostiarra, they expressed some words of admiration and took his usual joke seriously: “ Well, come to San Sebastian, We'll make room for you in my kitchen!”, similar to what we Andalusians usually say when we say goodbye to fleeting encounters with a "Let's see if we stay."
The first week I had to manage to ride my own production line, placing the cutting board under an oven, on top of a blast chiller, which they kept opening and closing pastry mates, forcing me to choreograph a julienne-cutting motion and dodge with my hips without breaking my rhythm.
Since I started infiltrate prestigious kitchens, I have formed great friendships with other stagiers, each with their concerns and aspirations, but united in a common mission to move forward services that the gastronomic critics then talk about.
On my tour of San Sebastian, as soon as I entered, Pello asked me where did he come from When answering him, he raised his eyebrows and blurted out: “From Malaga! Come on! Today you come in all colors! ”, After what he sent me to the cold starter game under the tutelage of Guillermo, another Malaguita practitioner, fifteen years younger than me, with whom I immediately I formed a tandem.
In addition to having overwhelming charisma, Guille has the nerve that great chefs use for speed and low tolerance for pretensions. On one of our mornings before going up to the restaurant, we stopped by a tobacconist to buy tobacco. He, Marlboro Light; me, a packet of American Spirit rolling tobacco. “Why do you buy that tobacco, to make you interesting , No?".
One Saturday night, at the end of the starter service, It was deep cleaning, including hosing down to unclog drains. Guille handled the hose, while I took care of open and close the tap from outside the restaurant.
Juan María Arzak with some of his creations
Rogue and come upstairs after a euphoric service, I turned on his hose early to play a joke that he didn't sit well with her. Immediately afterwards, Víctor, another stagier younger than me, who we will hear about in the future, approached me, separating me from the faucet and blurting out: “I think it's good that you're having fun, but some of us who are here we come to work seriously And we don't have time to fuck. So please, I'm asking you to if you come to fuck Do not hinder those of us who have come here to learn.”
Few times in my life have I received such a jerk . and less than someone younger than me , with such clear ideas. The words of my game partner they were burned into me to this day, and I try to measure my uncontrollable desire to clown whenever he went to work with a kitchen team. At least until you learn how to keep a service running like Ainhoa Olano.
Ainhoa wears fifteen years cooking in Arzak, And if that Catalan gastronomic critic who publicly said that ** women don't know how to cook ** had the decency to go down to the kitchen to check who are the ones who direct each of the games of this gastronomic cathedral , would be in the position of having to correct their opinions through one of his texts for ABC.
In a busy weekend service, Juan Mari entered ordering a foie gras terrine that Ainhoa had neglected to prepare. Without blinking, he answered her with the calm that those who lead cumulative flight hours : “Barkatu, Juan Mari, he left me completely. In thirty you have it. Guille, take a liver out of the camera”. And he proceeded in front of eight fellows kitchen, to give us a lesson in what is expected of a starting head of a three Michelin star.
Between attending orders that did not stop coming in, get your dishes out to perfection and check that everything went to the time that General Aramburu marked, Olano had the opportunity to improvise a perfect foie gras terrine in record time and with an impeccable finish.
The legendary Arzak restaurant
The time I made a similar terrine at home, It took me three days to plan and four from when I started macerating it to serving it. Hers was tastier. I have seen Michael Jackson do moonwalk live, to PJ Harvey at the IBF 2002 and to Ainhoa Olano in Arzak's pass. If she were an android with an expiration date, her steps and movements would be memorable memories that will disappear like tears in the rain.
Much is said today about ** the relevance of these restaurants, decadent ** in many aspects, questionable as to the ethics of needing so much volunteer help, but you rarely find ecosystems as balanced as in elite kitchens, in which talented professionals can achieve the zenith of its potential before taking flight on its own and raising a root to state of grace