Hi everyone, welcome to potluck food talks.
I'm here with my man, E.K.
Jimmy, aka Phil W.
Hey, what's up?
How are you doing, man?
Good, man.
What has been going on?
What's the news?
I traveled to Bolzano.
Have you been in Bolzano?
Südtirol?
Is that in the like in the Alp region?
Like yeah, exactly.
It's north Italy, south Austria.
So they speak Austrian German and they eat Knudels.
I love that area.
It's such a cool mix of like Austrian and Italian culture and some amazing food there
also.
I was at Beam, like a super cool hospital innovation summit.
And we had a dinner from a chef called Stefan Zippel.
He has a restaurant called 1908.
You have to go with a cable train and it looked really nice, man.
It's like a Michelin star place in an old building, but the food looked really nice.
And so he cooked like in the event I was for the dinner.
It was like a banquet, a group dinner.
It was like a poached egg with a hay foam and wild herbs.
Super nice.
Super, super nice.
Nice.
That sounds really good.
I think hay is like an underrated ingredient, honestly.
Absolutely.
Like I never had it before.
The Nordic movement.
That's the way I found out about it, but I'm pretty sure it has to be like a cooking ingredient
that has been around for ages, for sure.
A hundred percent.
I think like I, the first time I used hay to sort of smoke things, but I saw it, especially
in Japan, there's this thing where they spike a bonito fillet, so tuna fillet, and then
on over the grill, they throw a big handful of hay on and it catches fire and they hold
the bonito right into the fire, which normally is very counterintuitive, right?
We don't want things to be in the flame and it just smokes the outside and you make like
a bonito tataki.
Smokes and chars the outside and then you slice it thickly.
And usually like there we were eating it with like a mustard and soy sauce sort of thing.
It was so tasty.
That sounds amazing.
I can't wait to go to Japan.
Yeah.
And then later on I used hay, which I really like.
I would take, also hay is not equal to hay.
Like the hay that you buy to feed your hamsters isn't the hay that, you know, like a very
high quality cattle farmer will serve.
You know, there's a lot of nuances like good hay has a lot of like wild herbs dried inside
of this and slightly fermented maybe.
And I used to toast the hay in the oven until it's very gold, like deep brown.
And then I would infuse it in milk.
And it's like really crazy.
You have this like almost like, it's kind of like a caramel, right?
Yeah.
But you have this like speculo cinnamony kind of flavors.
Yeah.
But very, very subtle.
That's actually the first time I tried it was in a sweet ice cream and I was like, wow,
like it's incredible how something like this has been around all the time.
And I never tried before.
And on the other side, we're importing vanilla from Magadascar.
You know, it's crazy.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
Now, one time I, when I was hiking with my dad, one time when I was a teenager, I came
across a really, really interesting condiment in an area of the Alps in Austria.
And they told me, oh, this is really traditional here.
So it was a jelly.
So kind of like a jam, but a jelly made from apple.
So apple juice, clear jelly, kind of like, I don't know, like a raspberry jelly, but
like clear, lightly golden.
And it was flavored with hay flowers.
So the first time like the hay comes up with the flowers, they take that, they cut it off.
But the hay like, you know, grows back.
And in this first harvest of the hay, that's what they used to flavor this jelly.
And sounding interestingly enough, they traditionally eat it with very ripe mountain cheese.
Okay, nice.
And I was like, man, that's so, that's so genius.
Like that's such a fucking cool combination.
Just like sweet and sour apple jelly with this like hay flavor together with like really
like Gruyere style cheese.
I was like, man, this is amazing.
Super nice.
I also wanted to talk about you, about your, the restaurant you're leading now, man.
I've seen like you're having some good press, some good reviews, some acknowledgement.
I also saw the dishes.
It really looks really nice, man.
Congratulations about that.
Oh, thank you very much.
That's very nice of you.
Yeah.
So this dish, what was it like fermented asparagus with like a hamachi?
What was it exactly?
Oh yeah.
That's like, that dish actually changed now, but we had it on the menu for a while.
I like to have like a crudo on the menu, so like a raw fish dish.
And it's like hamachi just sliced raw.
And then we made a dressing out of, we had all this like asparagus peel and asparagus
off cuts, because it was just now white asparagus season, right?
So we had a lot of asparagus peel.
Part of it we made into soup, but there's only so much asparagus soup that people can
eat, you know?
So we had all this asparagus peel.
We're kind of like, well, what should we do with it?
And one of our chefs, Olia, had the idea of fermenting it in brine.
She's a fermentation wizard.
And so she did, it was like a 3% salt brine with like other stuff.
And what came out was a very light, very lightly funky, very, very umami, delicious, refreshing
asparagus water.
And it was just kind of standing there.
We weren't really sure what to do with it.
And I was kind of like, why don't we use it as a dressing for the fish?
And it like would work perfectly because it's kind of like an aguachile, you know, just
much lighter.
Super nice.
So it's kind of like an alpine or not alpine, like a Brandenburg aguachile, right?
Kind of, yes.
Kind of.
Where's the fish from?
What fish are you using?
Right now we're using hamachi, which we're getting from, so basically all the fish that
I buy comes from this company called Frischgefischt, which means freshly fished.
And their focus is on doing sustainably caught.
High quality fish.
And this hamachi, actually I can't tell you where the hamachi is from, which country,
but they're very focused on not selling fish that is endangered, that is caught with unethical
practices, et cetera, you know.
And they're very seasonal also, which I really appreciate, which I feel like people are kind
of unaware of that fish has a season also.
Fish isn't just always available.
Like for example, right now, I think two weeks ago we got in the first shipments from them
off place.
Well, it's not quite place.
It's like, in German we call it Scholle.
It's a flatfish.
Yeah, I know Scholle.
Yeah.
And they're super nice.
Like amazing, amazing quality.
About like 500, 600 grams heavy without the head.
Perfect for like two people.
And we just grill it on both sides, pull off the skin.
So it's just a flesh.
And then we just douse it in like a foamy van jen sauce and cafe de Paris butter on
top and a little bit of like pimoise fillet and just send it out all like that.
And it's just so nice.
Can you shortly explain what a cafe de Paris is?
I feel like I explained this before.
Yeah.
We did a video reaction about it.
I remember.
Okay.
So a cafe de Paris butter.
It is basically the most famous herb butter in the world and there's like different variations
on it, but basically you temper butter and you whip it up with other ingredients like,
oh, traditionally it's like shallots, anchovies, tarragon, paprika, a little bit of mustard,
Worcestershire sauce, some curry powders usually in there, but we make it like more, a little
bit more plain and more sort of like tarragon-y paprika, shallots.
So it's like flavored butter, which is nice because you have the butter made and it cools
down and then it like, well, you don't never really heat it up, right?
But it solidifies again.
And then you, when you're serving the dish, you just put the butter in a hot pan and it
comes up one time, just bubbles, foams up and you pull it off because you don't want
the butter to cook too much so the flavors don't go.
But because it comes up to temperature one time, all the flavors like really expand and
like awaken and at the end of the day you have this like big fish, but sort of like
a little bit smoky, but very soft.
And you have this like really nice kind of like very classic like wine sauce that's kind
of broken with the flavored butter.
It's just a very luxurious sort of dish.
But yeah, anyway, so it's kind of like they do this fish and I really appreciate working
with somebody, especially with the fish industry being the way it is, where they're like, no,
we don't sell this type of fish, you know, or that I can talk to somebody and they're
like, and I'm like, hey, how long is this?
Like for example, if the place I was like, how long is this going to be available?
And they're like, well, the season is starting.
And I was like, well, how much availability is there?
And they were sort of like, and explained to me with flatfish, you're basically in
the green.
Flatfish, we can eat almost as many as we want.
They're not endangered at all.
They're super sustainable.
It's a green light, you know, whereas with other fish like roundfish, it's a little bit
more gray area.
And if you can, you know, you should stay away from it just to let it like regenerate
a little.
And that's, you know, obviously for me as a professional is super nice.
Talking about fish, I recently had like a crazy experience.
You know, I'm going to Japan in December, so I'm super excited and I'm getting tips
from people from Japan and my friend Barry who lives there.
He writes me and tells me, I have this friend who is visiting San Sebastian, take him out.
He will be highly repaid when you come to Japan because this guy runs like a culture
magazine called matcha, like the tea.
And by the way, like an important thing to point out, he travels always wearing a kimono,
like a traditional kimono.
Oh wow.
Yeah, like when I met him, he was like, yeah, this is for me, like a way of communicating,
you know, and you know, he runs a culture magazine.
I was checking the culture magazine and there were like, I don't know, things to do in Kyoto,
you know, these kinds of contents, the hotel, this and that.
And so like I, we had like a pincho lineup of 15 different pinchos with it.
And after that, he helped me write my itinerary, like the cities, there is about two cities
he mentioned that were not on my radar, which is super interesting.
And then he said, I want to try the sushi, like something from here, someone who cooks
sushi that represent the region here.
And I immediately thought about pincheira and Thai sushi because he has these sushis
with yasawa cheese, you know, like this.
And he was really impressed.
He was really impressed.
We ate at the bar.
I have to say, and perhaps this is not such a nice thing to say because it's not like
an autoctonals food from here, but I think that's my favorite restaurant here in the
city, like a normal casual restaurant.
I fucking love it.
Every time I go, I really enjoy.
And so he, when he sent us like the sashimi dish, he had like this whole representation
of like five different oceans, like this from here.
This is like an Almadrava style of catching and the scallop man, the scallop blew my mind.
I was like, wow, what the fuck is this?
And he told me he floated in from Hokkaido.
So it was a Japanese scallop.
Oh, wow.
It was super, super nice.
Yeah.
I really enjoyed that one.
Nice.
Okay.
What else?
What else is new?
The tonne leading Aquilarre.
Crazy, right?
Hey, yeah.
I mean, you know, congratulations, Jorge, if you're listening to this and, you know,
well-deserved.
I'm very looking forward to seeing what's coming out of it.
I mean, imagine this guy was like about, I think 11 years coordinator of the Culinary
Academia of Bas Culinary Center.
So he has been in contact with all the chefs that go to BCC, which in 10 years have to
be a couple of hundreds, top chefs, you know, like to give lectures.
So imagine not only the connections, but also all the knowledge that he accumulated in that
time and that environment.
Now to apply it to like a three star restaurant, I think it's amazing, man.
I really want to go do it.
I want to go there.
And he told me, but give me time and give me at least one year.
And, and yeah.
Makes sense.
I actually said the same thing to people who were like, oh, we're going to come to eat
them.
We're going to come yet.
Stay away from me.
And it's like, but yeah, that's the reason to go.
You know, I mean, like now, because I mean, Aquilarre is a legend, right?
But then we also have to be honest, nothing much has been going on there.
And it wasn't really exciting for anybody who wanted, like who was a little bit into
like astronomy.
It wasn't really that exciting to go.
Right.
Exactly.
I mean, nor to Aquilarre or Arsac, because for me, these places are like super classic
right now.
Like, it's not like, I don't think I'm going to find a revelation if I go there.
Like, I can only think of one or two iconic dishes from Aquilarre.
One is this, you know, this gelatin that looks like a coarse gruyere.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And then the second minute it's curdled, where they bring a milk that is liquid to the table
side and it curds in front of you.
And that's it.
But these things are from the mid 2000s, you know, like 30 years ago.
I don't know any dish from them from the last 20 years.
No, I don't know anybody who worked there.
I don't know anybody who stashed there.
I don't know any like dishes where you kind of like, oh wow, you know?
Yeah.
So it's cool.
It's very, very cool.
And I mean, it's, I've also never been there, but it must be an insanely beautiful restaurant.
I was there for a job interview 20 years ago and it is, it has to be one of the most beautiful
restaurants in the world.
Like with the sea views, it's amazing.
It's really impressive.
Like the architecture of the place.
Super nice.
Oh man.
It would be my dream restaurant, honestly, like overlooking the sea, like the Basque
seaside.
Like if you're in the dining room, the only thing you see is the sea.
You only see blue sea.
That's it.
So you feel like in the sky, you know, it's crazy.
It's kind of like, like Michel Bras restaurant, you know, where you just see like the fields,
you know, nothing else.
Exactly.
And the restaurant is kind of like a cliff.
So you only see the sea from above.
Super nice.
Awesome.
Well, I am very, very excited to see what Jorge is going to do with the restaurant and
I'm looking forward to maybe, maybe we should plan a trip, you know?
And like I need to come to San Sebastian really soon.
I need to do a pilgrim ship to Elcano and a pilgrim ship to Echibarri and a pilgrim ship
to the places in Donostia and maybe.
Ibai reopened.
You heard about that?
Yes.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
That is, that is monumental.
You know, Ibai were two brothers, Alicio Garro was the head chef and his brother and the
brother passed away.
So then COVID came, they closed the restaurant.
It's crazy because they closed the restaurant and four years later they reopened.
So the restaurant was COVID untouched.
So like the whole bar is without the glasses that were mandatory during COVID and all the
bars have them.
So it's kind of like a, it already was like a time trip back then.
Yeah.
And it really feels like that again.
But also there has been changes, you know, that like, I wouldn't say that it has a hundred
percent the vibe it had because it was very, I wouldn't say rustic because it was elegant,
but it had a rustic vibe.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, like an old school vibe.
Yeah.
And also, you know, like the service was moody and it was like a very noble cuisine, you
know, like the service was moody and the dishes are also like old fashioned in a way, but
because of their minimalism and their product quality and their execution, they're timeless,
you know, and they will never ever feel, I actually, you know, when we kind of briefly
spoke about it the other day, I pulled up a blog post, which I still have open here
because it's so fucking cool.
And it's a blog post from 2015, which is a long time ago now.
And that's two years after I ate there and looking at the pictures now, it's a type of
cooking and it's a type of cuisine that will never ever be old fashioned.
It will never come out of date.
It's like, this could be a hundred years ago.
This could be a hundred years in the future.
It would always be valid and excellent.
And for me, that's a very special way of cooking that you can say that about, you know.
I went to eat there with Chinonamay because nobody had, he didn't have a translator to
go there and the waiters are moody and everybody was scared that they were going to scream
at him or something, which they would definitely do if he goes there without a translator.
For sure.
I can't say the Chino here.
So it was cool to go with him because he was also like appreciating the whole thing, like,
look at the decoration and place and the dishware and everything.
I remember him saying when we had the merluza, the hake in salsa verde and green sauce, he
was like, I could take a plane from Tokyo just to have this again.
And I remember we also had like coccochas and we were about to eat them.
The guy came from the kitchen, actually the brother of Garro, and he said, don't cut it.
Eat it all in one bite.
You never cut a coccacha.
You know, these kind of things where the chef comes out of the kitchen to instruct you how
to properly eat his food.
I love that.
It's so unapologetically authentic.
I remember when we went to eat that, we had a really great time.
And then at the end of the dinner, we were explaining that we're stagiais from Mugaritz
and stuff and that it was an amazing experience.
And we were sort of like, do you think we could maybe have a look in the kitchen quickly?
And the guy was like, no.
I remember like, okay.
All right.
I've seen pictures of the kitchen, like the old kitchen, it got completely renewed.
So the project was taken by Paulo from Amelia, which is, I think he's like a great entrepreneur.
You know, like he has to be one of the most Michelin star chefs in Spain right now.
He has like a lot of projects, like in London, in Asia.
He has Amelia.
He has some other places.
So smaller, smart, casual restaurants.
And now he took this.
So I think he is the right guy to take something like this.
But still like these things are, you know, it's like, it's always controversial.
You heard about, there was like a couple of years ago, there was a rumor that Elcano was
closing and that Dani Garcia was going to buy it and run it.
What do you think about that?
Oh yeah.
Jesus Christ.
Imagine that.
It would be crazy, you know?
But at the same time, I think it would for sure lose part of its essence, but it will
also keep part of the essence.
And there is no other way, you know, like you can keep it a hundred percent with a different
management and having a place like that and changing the whole concept.
Like, let's say bar where Norma used to be, you know, like it's the same place, but a
complete different concept, right?
That's true.
These are different things, you know, like.
It's always hard to imagine, you know, that something so expressive, you know, is ever
going to be replaced with something that is going to take that place, you know, which
it doesn't.
It's just a physical place, but it's something else.
And I think the comparison that you made with bar and Norma is very good because I mean,
who would have thought that, you know, like when Norma leaves the space, it's kind of
like, well, this is always going to be in the Norma space.
It's like, yeah, fair enough.
And I mean, I went there and I was impregnated with that historical vibe, you know, like,
because I never went to Norma.
So I was like, oh, here's where all the things happen, right?
And it's part, it's the essence of the building.
It's the history of the building, you know?
Absolutely.
And I mean, you, I know you had a bad experience at bar, but.
Not at all.
No, no, it was not a bad experience.
I had some, there were some slips in the service, but I really enjoyed the food.
Okay.
All right.
It's cause just cause I'm sorry if I think that you had a bad time is cause you were
hating on it so much that, you know, why would I think that you had a bad time?
No, no, no.
I said, I said, I said the food was nice.
It just, the service fucked us.
Service fucked.
Okay.
Sorry.
Yeah.
It was cool.
Like I dig the restaurant concept of bar.
I dig the food.
It's like its own thing.
You can see the Nomad DNA, but it's like a new thing and it's, it's very, very cool.
So yeah, but I can't, I can't imagine like, you know, like we were so much like it's a
Barry, for example, Elcano.
It's kind of like, we're looking at it from a distance.
You're like, man, if they, if that ever stops, if they ever like, if the tour ever stops
cooking, it should just close and that's it.
It should just finish with that because, but then again, have you, have you seen the, his
long time sous chef opening cheese bar?
Yeah.
Like a Japanese guy, right?
Looks fucking great.
Yeah.
Now they, they have like a big beef going on.
They hate each other.
I mean, Peter hates his, the other guy.
Oh really?
That's what I heard.
Like he's not happy about it at all.
I mean, like, I don't know Peter, but the, the perception I have from him is to be like
this, you know, hermit grill master, not friendly.
Yes.
I mean, I thought that because actually the Japanese guy who opened cheese bar, he's been
at Etch-a-Barry for fucking ages.
I met him in San Sebastian when he was working at Etch-a-Barry in 2013, you know, I met him
in like a, in like a pub, um, like drinking and we talked a little bit, you know, and,
um, and he's still there, you know, he was like proper, he was living in like a mountain
hut for like a really long time and just living the life there.
And I thought that it must've been like with Peter together, they opened this new place,
but apparently not.
Not from what I've heard.
I might be wrong, but that's what, uh, that's the word in the streets.
Yeah.
So you've got the inside, the inside Basque information.
What about restaurants, family restaurants that continue without the, let's say the imagine
like the Tuago.
Yeah.
Or bra.
Continuing it without the family or our sack for that matter, or I don't know.
Without any of the family, not the sons, not the daughters, not anything.
Exactly.
Do you think something like that would make sense?
I mean, let's like, like what's happening to Robuchars, no, it's just, uh, I mean, what
is Robuchar?
Or Paul Bocuse.
Yeah.
But what is that?
You know, does anybody want to go to Paul Bocuse?
Absolutely not.
I mean, I, that's actually a place where, where I didn't like the food, especially.
Bocuse or Robuchars?
Robuchars.
I've never been to Bocuse.
Yeah, me neither.
It's also not on my list of places to go.
No, of course not.
But it's, it's just natural, no, because you want to, you want to be part of the side guest.
You want to be there when it happens, you know, Bocuse is not there anymore.
Robuchars is not there anymore.
I'm sure it was fantastic when he was there, you know?
Of course.
And they, they were at some point they were the best restaurant in the world.
Yeah.
You know, both of them, like in different times and, and the most influential in, in
innovative chefs, Bocuse maybe 50 years ago, 40, I don't know.
And, and, or Sean, a little bit later, 30, 20, something like that.
30, more like 30, 40.
Yeah.
So if you had, if you, if you get like a bonus card, you can visit one three star restaurant
in Spain.
What's your choice?
Any one.
You can choose, but it has to be three star and you, you can choose only one.
What's your, what's on top of your list?
I would probably choose just for the experience of it.
And probably because the food's very delicious.
I would probably go to Diverso.
Diverso.
Okay.
But I can also not think of that many three Michelin star restaurants, to be honest, because
I'm terrible.
I think like for me, the, the OGs, like the Godfather would be the Roccas.
Ah, yeah.
Can Roca, of course.
I mean, that must be really, really, I'm sure that's just a fantastic experience with really
cool food.
You know, Aceromendi can, you know, stay away.
I don't really want any to any of that.
I have, I have three others that I would, that could easily be on my top.
One is Diverso as well.
I would say Nour from Paco Morales could also be there because I think it's crazy and creative
what he does.
And Disfrutar, man, because I think Disfrutar is the closest you can get to El Budi nowadays.
It's actually the continuation of El Budi.
But do they have three Michelin stars?
Yeah, I recently found out as well.
Oh.
Yeah, there are like a lot three star restaurants right now in Spain.
I don't remember how many, but around 15.
That's a lot.
Yeah, 30.
My list here says 13, but, uh, exactly.
Disfrutar is not part of it.
But one thing, you know, like I'm kind of, I'd be kind of curious to go to a Peresategui
restaurant or so.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Yeah.
But I feel like maybe it's just not as sharp.
Like, I feel like his cooking probably at one point was very delicious, but what also
is kind of interesting is Aponiente.
Oh yeah.
Aponiente with this whole, yeah, Disfrutar, double check, has three stars.
Yeah, Aponiente with all this seafood, territorialism, super interesting, definitely.
It's very cool.
But I stick to Diverso.
And now that you've told me, Disfrutar also on the very top list.
Yeah.
For me, yeah.
Diverso, Disfrutar, and Can Roca.
And Nur would be like, yeah, maybe place four.
Nice.