At three-Michelin-starred Azurmendi, you become part of the story long before you ever take your seat. Chef Eneko Atxa has woven the landscape, memory and produce of the Basque Country not only into his dishes but into every aspect of the restaurant. For me, Azurmendi was one of the most compelling dining experiences I have had in recent years. And the story continued when I returned to Bilbao, seven floors above the hotel where I was staying.
The moment you walk through the door, you feel less as though you have entered a three-Michelin-starred dining room than arrived at a picnic. A small basket is placed before you, its contents intended to be eaten with your hands. From there, instead of being shown to your table, you are invited into the kitchen. Across the counter are heirloom tomatoes in different colors and shapes, alongside a series of tomato-based bites. Leaving the kitchen, you still do not head for the dining room. Instead, you move through another space, created with recycled materials and resembling a contemporary art installation, discovering a succession of small bites as you go. Only then are you taken to your table in the main dining room. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass are trees, and the boundary between inside and out seems almost to disappear.
I have been eating in exceptional restaurants around the world for many years. At some point, three Michelin stars, flawless service and dazzling technique no longer impress quite as easily as they once did. There are even moments when I find myself wondering whether fine dining is beginning to look increasingly alike wherever you go. Here, however, I never felt I was watching a spectacle engineered simply to surprise me. I felt I had stepped inside the world of a chef who knows exactly what he wants to say.
That chef is Eneko Atxa, one of the defining figures of contemporary Basque cuisine. Alongside its three Michelin stars, Azurmendi has twice been named the World’s Most Sustainable Restaurant by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
The restaurant preserves the seeds of more than 400 local vegetable varieties, conducts research into hydroponic cultivation, produces its own compost, harvests produce daily and works with a network of small local producers. When the building was designed in 2012, locally sourced and recycled materials, together with renewable-energy technologies, were already integral to the project.
Azurmendi is an extraordinarily refined, beautiful and at times theatrical experience. Yet it redefines luxury not through the quantity of expensive ingredients on the plate, but through the quality of the relationship between an ingredient and its journey from seed to table. The tomatoes I encountered in the kitchen are a perfect example. Atxa takes this most everyday of ingredients and explores its skin, flesh, pulp and liquid in different forms. Within minutes, the same tomato appears in different textures, temperatures and intensities of flavor.
An oyster arrives topped with an icy preparation made from more than 30 marine ingredients, shoots and seaweeds. The first sensation is of an icy, saline, iodine-rich sea; seconds later, the natural sweetness of the oyster emerges. Recently singled out by Michelin inspectors as one of their most memorable dishes, it does not so much represent the sea as allow you to taste the Cantabrian coast in a few mouthfuls.
Another dish brings together charcoal-roasted pepper, fermented pepper juice and txistorra, the characteristic Basque sausage. For me, this dish is every bit as important as the others in understanding Atxa’s relationship with tradition. Here, tradition is a living memory, rearticulated through contemporary technique. The pepper is still unmistakably pepper, the txistorra still txistorra, yet familiar flavors acquire a clarity, intensity and contemporary language of their own.
The lobster takes a different approach. Removed from its shell, it is cooked over charcoal and served with vegetable jus and a butter made from its own shell. There is intensity rather than ostentation. It feels less like transforming an ingredient into something else than making it somehow more itself. To me, this is one of the great strengths of Atxa’s cooking. However sophisticated the technique, what you remember in the end is not the technique itself, but the ingredient — and the flavor it leaves on your palate.
The name of one dessert sums up Atxa’s entire approach more eloquently than any technical explanation could: “Honey and a Thousand Flowers.” The menu describes it as the representation of a landscape. And at Azurmendi, everything ultimately leads you back to the same place: Geography. The tomato speaks of the soil, the oyster of the sea, the pepper of Basque culinary memory and the honey of the landscape. Behind the dishes are farmers, fishermen, beekeepers and small producers; beyond the windows is the green world to which those dishes belong. The landscape outside ceases to be scenery and becomes an extension of what you are eating inside.
If Azurmendi was one of the most compelling dining experiences I have had in recent years, I think it was not simply because I ate exceptionally well. It was because, for a few hours, I was allowed to see the world through Eneko Atxa’s eyes.
On the way back from Azurmendi to my hotel in Bilbao, I found myself thinking about an article I had written a few months earlier: “Now the Restaurant Chooses the Hotel.” Fittingly, on the top floor of the Radisson Collection Hotel Gran Vía Bilbao, where I was staying, is Azurmendi’s sister restaurant, Eneko Basque. Here we encounter a more relaxed, urban expression of Atxa’s cooking. Basque cuisine, grilling, cured meats, dishes designed for sharing and wines from the region take center stage. One of the most appealing features of the restaurant, which is also included in the Michelin Guide, is its terrace. Bilbao’s urban landscape on one side, a strong expression of Basque cooking on the other: In a city you have travelled to for its gastronomy, your hotel can keep you connected to the story of the destination without even having to step outside for dinner.
Once, a good restaurant was simply an added advantage of staying at a five-star hotel. Today, as gastronomy increasingly becomes a reason to travel in its own right, some restaurants have developed identities strong enough to influence the choice of where we stay. In a city such as Bilbao, already a destination for food lovers, that relationship becomes even more meaningful. You stay in the heart of the city, spend the day exploring Bilbao’s food culture, travel out to Larrabetzu for Azurmendi, and when you return to your hotel in the evening, the gastronomic journey continues.
When I left Bilbao, it was not the most expensive ingredient or the most spectacular plate that stayed with me. It was those tomatoes in the kitchen. A chef pursuing every possibility of an ingredient, from its skin to its liquid; a restaurant preserving hundreds of local seeds; and the idea that a meal can begin long before you ever sit down at the table… A few months ago, I wrote that restaurants were beginning to determine the hotels we choose. Returning from Bilbao, I found myself wanting to add one more line: Sometimes a restaurant determines not only the hotel, but the entire journey.
