Arzak - Ruined!

San Sebastian is a reasonably sized town in the Basque region of Spain, up near the Pyranees, on the border with France and in a bay sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean. It's also a quite prosperous city and has the highest number of top 50 rated restaurants outside of Paris. We tried Arzak, currently number 8 restaurant in the world and consistently in the top 10.  So how good could it possibly be?!

The restaurant certainly doesn't depend on any razzle dazzle for it's ratings.  The decor is of course very well done but simple and sparse.  There's no view to speak of and no ornate architecture, just well spaced, large tables with room to present the food at it's best and that's where the supurlatives begin!
 
The food is exquisite, stunning and quite exceeded all expections and anything I've ever had anywhere else!  We start with a chef's amuse which appropriately was composed of 5 small tapa dishes, the highlight of which was a tasty sliver of anchovy atop a strawberry! Sounds aweful doesn't it but the strawberry flavour had really been extracted and highlighted in a sauce and this allowed the strawberry to match the flavour of the fish, it was just a gorgeous food match.
These tapas were so good we were concerned whether this standard of food could be maintained for the degustation courses that we had selected but we needn't have worried.  Another highlight of the degustation here is that for both the fish and the meat course, we are offered a choice of 3 dishes. This allows us to select a different plate each.

The next dish is a caramelised bubble of foie gras (my mouth is watering already!) on a disc of apple. This dish was beautifully presented and just divine, great flavours to start with and just beautifully balanced.  Again we doubted this level of food could be maintained but I believe this is what sets this standard of restaurant apart. We've had meals at Vue and Aria that had a couple of truly amazing dishes but also a few misses.  These Arzac dishes have set the bar above anything that I've had elsewhere and the following dishes lived up to this level. 

We also asked the somellier to match 3 to 4 glasses of wine to the food for the night and we had some fantastic wines that we'll have to follow up when we get home; even better, the prices were reasonable.  I know the dollar is great against the Euro right now but we came out of this night at around $750, so the value was also really good.
The next dish to arrive has an almost cult rating, it translates to Egg of the Moment and is basically the "first laid" egg of the day, poached and presented in a bowl with crunchy little tasty bits including caramelised sesame seeds that looked like silver shot.  When we break the egg and stir it into the crunchy bits, it creates a gorgeous blend of flavours and textures and is just quite stunning. 

We're starting to lose superlatives to describe the food, we're hopelessly unable to convey our appreciation of the food to the wait staff and this extended to Elena (the chef) when she came out to talk to us.  Another "gold star" for the restaurant as she makes an effort to talk to all tables despite the number of languages that must be present on each evening! She is coming to Australia next March so seemed to make a real effort to talk to us.

The next course is the fish dish; I had the sea bass and Greg had the monk fish.  Again, beautifully presented. My dish had a sauce spread across the plate like sand with little sauces made to look like shells, a curacao star fish and red "seaweed" and it tasted sensational.  Greg's dish similarily had amazing presentation with what looked to be walnuts and green garlic but which were in fact perfectly matched flavours shaped as walnuts and green garlic cloves. Whilst the flavour was more subtle than my dish it was still very yummy!

We're also not too full! While we haven't wanted each dish to end that's because we don't want the flavours to be gone!  But the degustation has been really well created so that by the end, we're not too stuffed but very happily satisfied. The last of the main dishes was the pigeon for Greg and lamb for me.  The pigeon was melt in the mouth tender with a gamey flavour while the lamb was quite rare for what we're used to but incredibly tender with the sauce just enhancing the flavour.  That's been quite consistent; the sauces and other "decorations" on our plates have just enhanced the flavour of the dish itself and added to the presentation of the meal.  The main ingredients though have been the highlight of each dish.

By this stage of the night we've been exchanging looks of "OMG this is good" with another Aussie couple on a nearby table so we finally got together to share stories on what had brought them here.  There was an American couple on the table next door and they'd lived in Oz and really knew their food and wine so we also invited them over. We unanimously agreed that this was by far the best dining experience we'd all enjoyed (and the Aussies had done Tzetzuyas) and our only regret was that we were probably ruined for eating out anywhere else! A nice touch was the special cake for our anniversary celebration, we've been milking that for a while now!

So the deserts started and this has been a dish that I've always been disappointed in with degustations. Perhaps I'm usually too full by desert but I actually think it's because they're trying to be too tricky and haven't used enough chocolate! But not here!!  Gregs plate was scattered with little chocolate moose serves, each topped with a sugary wafer.  My dish was little balls of chocolate in a strawberry sauce and basil sorbet and believe it or not, the basil matched perfectly.  The little chocolate balls were just an explotion of liquid chocolate flavour when they popped in my mouth; these were extraordinarily good.

Finally a plate of bite sized sweets with a pineapple jelly, apricot wafers and chocolate covered in cocoa. Our new American friend shouted our tables a bottle of Le Grand Dame to celebrate the occassion and the six of us shared travel, food and wine stories into the early morning!  We finally noted we were the last standing, including the staff (!) so regretably left Arzac and the finest food I have ever experienced behind.