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June 27, 2006
Martin Berasategui, not convincing
On a recent trip to the Basque country I tried a number of restuarants in this part of Europe that is often touted as one of the epicentres of culinary vanguard. I shall report on some of the visits I made. First out is the meal at Martin Berasategui.
The day I went to Martin Berasategui was a pretty hot day in the beginning of June. I had asked for a terrace table but it was too hot to sit outside. The dining room was completely empty when I arrived well after 1.20 pm on a Thursday. It is really amazing that a 3-star restaurant, hyped to the moon by journalists and PR (some possibly funded by the Spanish government) in a region touted by the same as the epicentre of culinary vanguard, is not even half full when it is high season or close to.
I was told when trying to book hotel rooms that practically all hotels in Donostia/San Sebastian were full due to the ETA cease fire. MB does not seem to get much spill over effects from that. Well it got better somewhat after I was seated, a French couple arrived and clearly not content with the empty dining room they whispered for the duration of their meal. When I left the restaurant, a Spanish party of three that seemed to be a walk-in arrived and a table was arranged for them. So in all there were 6 guests for lunch. It is along the lines with what I have heard from others, although I imagined that it would be better when in high season. With all the staring wait staff, it is easy to start wondering how such an operation is financed, but I got a hint of that later in the meal. I will come back to it.
I got an English menu and it was funnier than the English menu at Arzak. Actually the English translation was as bad as it gets. I would reckon that there was something wrong with every second or third word. It was so bad that a Google-translation of the Spanish menu would have been an improvement. I am not sure why Spanish restaurants show such ignorance on the subject especially since many of these restaurants have actively searched publicity in English speaking countries and in countries where English is the second language. The English translation at Mugaritz was acceptable however.
I wanted to design my own menu with half courses. So after the restaurant manager had explained which courses I could have in half courses I decided to do my own menu with a couple of starters, a fish course, a meat course and finally a dessert.
The meal started with a couple of amuses. They ranged from excellent to exceptional. The stand out was the millefeuille with foie gras, apples and smoked eel. I could not help but to wonder what it would be like with extraordinary foie gras, but it was still an exceptional dish. The oyster with lemon grass was the least impressive but still excellent. I rated the amuses overall 18/20.
A variation on octopus in different textures and different temperatures followed. It was a master piece from every point of view. The large chunks of octopus were superbly cooked, the jelly, the dehydrated octopus chips, the bouillon and the foams were all superb expressions and gave multi-dimensional feelings to the dish. The execution of every item on the plate was flawless and it was the kind of dish you need well teamed brigade staff to execute. Bravo. This dish was a 19,5/20. It is pictured below.
After this beginning I was starting to think I was in for quite a treat. Almost like the occasions when Gagnaire is on top of the game.
The next dish was the heart of vegetables. I had heard so many great things about this dish that I wanted to try it. It is of course a visually very beautiful dish and the textural contrast between cooked and raw vegetables and the jelly can be fantastic. Well in theory that is. When the dish was put on the table, it reminded me of a vegetable dish with jelly and crayfish that I had at Michel Guerard many years ago and that rests in clear memory. I wonder if that rather than the Bras’ Gargouillou is the main source of inspiration, if there is one. I said that this dish could be fantastic, maybe even extraordinary, in theory. Well, the elements on the plate were simply not great ingredients. The vegetable elements were not displaying the tastes that each of the used vegetables can show when of top quality. Moreover, the lobster chunks were tasteless and chewy, just as if it was American lobster. I am sure it was as it looked like it and since on the day before, at Arzak I had seen “green lobster” on the menu. Ingredients at the two places were equally muted so it is easy to think they use the same sources. I was equally disappointed with the average quality of vegetables at the markets in Bilbao and San Sebastian that I visited. Really, not a single place had what I would call great stuff. Extebarri was the only restaurant on the trip that displayed excellent vegetables, most of which I was told came from their own garden. By contrast, the berries at Mugaritz were harvested just before the meal in their own garden but the berries were as tasteless as average supermarket fruit.
The vegetable’s heart dish could be a 19/20 dish but with the ingredients’ quality at hand it was a mere 15/20 if I am kind.
Next up was the sea bass. My motivation behind ordering the sea bass was to see what quality they would manage to source so close to the sea. The preparation was interesting. The sea bass was sitting in a crisp, vinaigrette-like emulsion of cucumber with a nice acidity. Not particularly profound cucumber taste but still quite good and it was a fresh taste. I touched the fish and it was clearly a little undercooked in the middle. After cutting the first piece but before putting it in my mouth I became a bit suspicious. Was this farmed sea bass? After a few bites and cutting through the undercooked centre I was certain it was a farmed sea bass. It had to some extent all the traits of farmed sea bass. It did not have the taste of the worst renditions of farmed sea bass but it was not a good fish. I had to ask the restaurant manager to see what his response would be and looked forward to a long argument with him and was prepared. I knew I was right and I had saved a small piece on the plate to prove me right just in case. Maybe he would say that it could be sea bass that had just escaped from a farm, an excuse answer I have been waiting for for some time. So I asked and his answer surprised me with its frank honesty. - Yes it is farmed, he said. Don’t you like it, he asked me. Here is a picture of it:
To me it is unacceptable that they serve average quality farmed sea bass at a place of this calibre, at least at the prices they charge. After two dishes of average ingredients I started to realise what compromises Berasategui needs to make for his business to break even. Farmed sea bass of this quality is not particularly expensive. So at 47 euros for a full portion, the cost of the ingredients is not likely above 20% for this course. That is really like being taken for a ride.
I was hoping that the lamb dish would get the meal back to where it started. It turned out to be a conceptually very boring dish. A couple of lamb chops, a few potato crisps and a few creamy (should have been called gluey) gnocchi and some dashes of a one-dimensional reduction. I ate the first lamb chop down to the bone to really get the taste of it but I only cut away the meat from the bone with the knife on the second chop as it was a not particularly interesting lamb from either textural or taste point of view. It was slightly undercooked like lamb tends to be in many places these days but I am not complaining about that. The quality of the lamb reminded me of the average lamb I had had at Arzak the day before.
The ginger ice cream with lemon tea was a good and refreshing dessert but really nothing special.
The bread was poor but less catastrophic than bread generally tends to be in Spain.
While the meal still was a good meal and everything was well executed except for the slight undercooking of the fish and not too exorbitantly expensive for what it was, Martin Berasategui does clearly not deserve 3-stars. Yes, I can say it so definitively after this meal. Sure, there are some serious stuff being served but it is simply not acceptable that a restaurant with that rating serves such average produce. In addition to this, some preparations are much too one-dimensional, like the lamb dish but also the sea bass dish. The ups and downs of the meal somehow remind me of Passedat at le Petit Nice in Marseille, even if Passedat’s lows are higher and he is using overall much better ingredients.
Gastroville rating 15/20.
Posted at 08:10 AM | Comments (1)
