Asador Sagartoki

In the last couple of years, Brian & I have been developing into foodies. We like good food, good beer, good wine, and good company. We like to experiment with making new dishes (which hopefully we'll have a little more time to do while we're here), and with trying lots of new things when we go out to restaurants.

For Christmas this year, Brian's parents got us this fabulous book:

... from which you can probably expect several more references from as we explore Spain.

The basic premise of the book: a few years ago, Mario Batali partnered with PBS to create a mini-series on food and culture in Spain.  Mario spent his high school years in Spain, and the food of the country continues to entice him.  He brought along Gwyneth Paltrow (who also spent some of her younger years in Spain), as well as another well known food critic, Mark Bittman, and Claudia Bassols, a famous Spanish actress from Barcelona.  They drive around Spain in a couple of convertibles, filming their experiences for the show, and then they turned it into a book with photos and recipes from their excursions.  {there is also a website for those of you who may want to visit virtually}

When we went to the Basque country a couple of weeks ago, I paged through the book hoping to find some tasty restaurants to check out.  Lucky me, I found this page:

We didn't know if we'd be able to find the restaurant in Vitora, but we had some touring to do, so we just parked and started walking.  Amazingly, the first street we walked down happened to have the restaurant on it!  It was far too early to eat dinner (5 pm) so we checked out some of the other sights prior to going back.  Vitoria was a beautiful city, very historic, and very clean, and maybe I'll get some pictures up of that some time.  But this is a food post.  I have to focus.

We returned that night and proceeded to attempt to figure out how to order.  In Spain, there are still several languages spoken in different parts of the country, and in Basque country, they speak a crazy language called Euskara which sounds nothing like Spanish, and linguists really don't know where the language evolved from (Sanskrit? Japanese? Finnish?).  But thankfully, Spanish is also widely understood.  So, at the bar, after attempting Spanish and pointing and nodding a lot, we started getting our food.  We ordered Pinxtos - essentially something that is just meant to be a bite or two.  Usually you go out to a bar, order a couple of drinks and some pintxos, and then head to dinner afterwords (maybe around 9 or 10).  We ended up spending the whole night there trying a bunch of different things, as you can see from my menu list:

Quickly the bartenders figured out that we were foreigners, and as I stumbled through asking for a menu in Spanish, one of the bartenders came up and said, "Hello, Good evening, What do you need, I speak English?"  He was from Morocco, and became our friend for the rest of the evening - checking in on us frequently though the bar was packed full, and always helping us right away when we approached the bar to order something new.  We loved the bar, the food, and the experience so much that we returned a second night.  We got to know Jamal better, as well as the other bartenders.  They learned our names too, and when our food would come out from the kitchen, they would shout "Brian" or "Kate" (which they definitely didn't do for the other bar patrons!)  We were stuffed full both nights, and as we left the second night, Jamal came out and shook Brian's hand and gave me a hug.  We would go back there again in a heartbeat.

{you can click on the photo to enlarge it and see the photos better}

So, if you can't tell from the photos, the food was AMAZING.  And we had a GREAT time too!

The way the food was displayed was very modern and cool: under glass.  If you look back at the page I scanned from the book, it looks like the food is in a museum - which is really the opposite of what the vibe is like in the bar!  People talking loudly, smoking, drinking cider, yelling their orders to the bartenders, throwing their napkins on the floor - like any good bar.

One item in particular deserves translation: Helado de Esporas.  Mushroom ice cream.  Actually pretty tasty.

On a non-travel note, we have completely settled into our apartment, and I'm working on making it feel like home!  I took a trip to Ikea on Monday, making me a very happy woman, and I'm continuing to explore the city to try to find new places to shop and get the things we need.  Things have been going great for Brian and work, and he's learning and speaking a lot of spanish.  We have met a lot of really fantastic people thus far, from Spain & the international community, and we're loving life here.  Missing everyone back home, but so thankful to have the chance to do this at this point in our lives!