The Hot Young Chefs of Bilbao
The Michelin star chefs of Bilbao are pushing Basque ingredients into new frontiers
By Anthea Gerrie
Artichoke sorbet for starters, salt cod ice-cream for pud and essence of rain-washed meadow. Whatever are the hot chefs of Bilbao up to?
Nursing their Michelin-starred reputation, mainly.
Once these coveted red rosettes were awarded for mere culinary excellence; today it's all about pushing the envelope.
If you've ever watched celeb chef Heston Blumenthal doing his weird scientific experiments with bacon and egg on TV, you've got the picture.
But in Bilbao, Spain's most visually exciting city with its folded-metal Guggenheim Museum and fantastic futuristic bridges, there's a second excuse for messing round with what mamma cooked best.
Brilliant new buildings put this once ugly industrial city on the map, and now the chefs have to live up to the architecture as well as each other.
They certainly wax poetic about the mad things they do with the local ingredients they still adore.
The Scent of Meadows
Eneko Atxa, who creates dishes with irresistible names like Playing in the Vineyards, is the hottest young chef of the day in more ways than one.
Chef Eneko Atxa
It's Enetko's blue-eyed charm, not just his award-winning food, which has lunch parties trooping out to his long, low shed of a restaurant set among rows of verdant vines in Larrabetzu, near Bilbao Airport.
"I want to awaken your emotions by teasing your sense of smell," says the 29-year-old, currently trying to recreate the scent of damp grass he believes we all find so seductive.
He's also been distilling the essence of fig leaves in his food lab at Azurmendi : "You may not be able to eat them, but they contain the soul of the fig tree."
→ Next Page: Salt Cod Ice Cream
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