Getaria, a
small town between San Sebastian and Bilbao, is home to the popular one star
restaurant Elkano. Apart from serving a huge variety of seafood, their signature
dish remains the turbot. Caught in the morning and served for lunch or dinner.
To start
our lunch we order a small portion of lobster and kokotxas (a Basque
speciality; the fleshy underpart of a hake fish’s jaw) since that will be
followed by a 1.3 kg turbot (73€ per kilo). The amuse bouche is a slightly fried piece of
excellent tuna. The garlic-lemon marinated lobster is of excellent quality.
This is, by the very nature of the restaurant, the closest you can get to the
origin of the product by adding few good ingredients to enhance the experience.
Now the
kokotxas: We never had kokotxas and now are being served three types of them
with the style of preparation being the sole difference. The first one is
slightly fried with egg yolk; the second is slightly cooked as is the third one
which comes marinated in pil-pil sauce (olive oil, garlic and parsley). I loved
the taste. It tastes very fishy with a blend of mussles.
And then it
comes, the turbot. Presented to us in its full beauty and then each part is
carefully prepared for us to eat. We are explained to pay attention to the
difference in taste between the bottom of side of the fish which is not exposed
to sunlight (fattier and softer) and the top which is continuously exposed to
it (more rawboned). The side parts can be eaten like spare ribs and, if that is
the correct term, tastes more like meat (chicken) than fish.
What can we say? High on proteins (and white wine) we are pondering about an unique experience. Products of a quality that is improbable to exceed and which are not suffocated by any distracting side dishes. I once had turbot in Germany...now I get the joke!
No comments:
Post a Comment