Errenteria | Kenneth Tiong eats

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Mugaritz | Errenteria | Jun ’14 | “dialogue”

Rating: 20/20
Address: Aldura Aldea, 20, 20100 Errenteria, Guipúzcoa, Spain
Phone: +34 943 52 24 55
Price per pax: €230 ($308 at 1 EUR = 1.35 USD)
Value: 5/5
Dining time: 180 minutes
Chef: Andoni Luis Aduriz
Style: simultaneously Modernist and New Naturalist*
Michelin Stars: 2

* See Emma Marris’s Beyond Food and Evil for a descriptive essay on fellow Modernist-New-Naturalist travellers, Noma and COI.

Abstraction. Mugaritz is an abstract restaurant, in several senses of the term. In the first sense of an “abstract idea”, the dishes are like gilded puzzle-boxes, each of which houses a dominant idea or “what-if” in cooking. I saw such ideas in a sandwich composed entirely of one-ingredient – the gelatinous hake cheek (kokotxas); and the lamb with mould growth that approximated wool. In a second not unrelated sense of serving “abstract dishes”, the ingredients are pared down, and quiet moments and momentary effects are allowed to take their place on a meditative stage. The sheer strangeness of discovery, that a turf of grass served as an ornament at the start of the meal is actually edible, struck me on that evening of uncommon stillness. A meditative, quiet place, dinner that evening reminded me of a peaceful afternoon watching rocks at a Kyoto rock garden.

In a third sense, Mugaritz reminds me of “mathematical abstraction”, where the constants of the restaurant experience (the conventional, such as the orthodoxy that every diner is served a dish on his/her own schedule) suddenly become variable (One such dish was “Linking…”, where every patron in the restaurant started making the same aspic sauce with a grinder at the same moment). Such dishes remind me that Mugaritz plays on a larger canvas of effects, a higher-dimensional space than other restaurants. If the heart of mathematical abstraction is to seek a greater generality in order to conceive of how a mathematical system could otherwise be – to produce a series of fruitful and plausible alternative conceptions, then Mugaritz is such a mathematically abstract restaurant. You are likely to encounter at least one dish here that will challenge your preconceptions about dining.

Mugaritz, as reflected in the international quality of the diners, exists as a reference point in the frontiers of world gastronomy. There is a subversive humor at work, which I love. I have found it difficult to write about my Mugaritz experience. The restaurant seems as meditative as a Zen Buddhist temple; the courses as ineffable as a series of Zen Buddhist koans. Through a series of dishes, the restless intelligences of the chef and his staff engage you in a Socratic dialogue that continues long after you have left the table…

Notable Links:

My June 2014 menu – “Simplicity, originality, lots of creativity, lots of innovation, lots of risk and uncertainty”

A dozen smeared radishes. (3.75/5)
- A nice salty tomato paste, full of flavor, but it did not curb the astringency of raw radishes, which left a latex taste in the mouth.
- The idea: Minimal transformation of ingredients, a la the veggie crudites from Blue Hill in New York.

7 spice Rattle. (3.5/5)
- A rattle featuring an outer meringue case
- The idea: Using ingredients to create a musical instrument.

Cultural textures. Several layers of dressed Kokotxas. (5/5)
- Brilliant. This toast sandwich of kokotxas, a seemingly one-ingredient dish, had the natural taste of gelatin from the filling, pure kokotxas, as well as two slices of kokotxas chitterling, made crispy from that gelatin.
- The idea: A one ingredient dish, playing with the potentials of gelatin in kokotxas, both in traditional gelatinous form, and crisp form

Mushrooms: house grown colony. (4.75/5)
- Baby mushrooms, tempura-ed at the bottom (with sour-lemon tastes changing into spiciness). The meaty texture was an ideal foil for the sour-lemon tastes

Lacquered duck neck with herbs and dry grains. (5/5)
- Duck neck with fresh herbs. All the natural tastes of duck skin with fresh tasting leaves.
- I liked that the accompanying plate emphasised that the lacquered skin was the duck’s neck.
- The idea: A duck neck that sheathed vegetables and not flesh.

Toast of roasted crusts. (5/5)
- Iberico pork neck dumpling – a mantou bun fused with pork skin, And pork meat atop.
- The idea: What if a pork bun could include crisp pork skin?

Vegetable tiles. A handful of Highland grass. (4.5/5)
- All this while, there was a turf of grass in front of me. I was served a bowl of tip, and to eat that turf of grass.
- It was surprising, and confounded at least two expectations – we don’t eat our table decorations, and we don’t eat grass.
- The grass turned out to be young Ethiopian teff grass, which had a very neutral flavor, though a fresh loosely packed yet springy texture – exactly what you’d imagine a carpet of grass would taste like. It was a good textural vehicle for pinenut cream and malt crumble.

The idea: A secretly edible dish, was all the time in front of the diner. Mirroring the own epiphanies of Andoni Aduriz: “We realized that even what is closest to us can seem exotic and mysterious merely on account of our ignorance: even though we are surrounded by a specific environment, we’ve never really lived in close contact with it.” “It Is clear that today ‘exotic’ is no longer associated with distance. Today, exotic is synonymous with the unknown. And the unknown, or mysterious, can be hiding right next to us, under that apple tree.” – Aduriz, Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking, p26

You can see Chef Aduriz cooking this dish, and others from this menu, in this video: https://vimeo.com/100296077

…decadentia… (5/5)
- At this point, I moved into the main building to continue with the meal.
- I was served a great piece of bread, comforting because it was crusty.
- And served a delicately textured fork, in a case.
- Along with a smoked eel mousse, eel crisps, and edible flowers on top. I was instructed to eat the mousse with the fork, and then eat the fork! The fork was made from sugar…
- Using the fork, it imparted a subtle sweetness to the smoked eel and flowers. Textural contrasts from eel crisps. And then… down the memory hole went the fork, as I ate it in 4 bites.
- What is one to say to such a dish, except “Bravo…Bravo!” to the imagination and the perfect execution of the kitchen. The whimsy and execution of the dish blew my mind. These are the touches that make the trip, no, pilgrimage, to Mugaritz worth it – nowhere else could you imagine serving these delicate set-pieces, these jeweled puzzle-boxes, these gilded conundrums, except at Mugaritz.
- I still recall this dish very fondly.
- The idea: Why should The Edible end at the tine of a fork?

Red scorpion fish marinated in its barrel bottom and sour textures. (4.5/5)
- Fresh almonds, oxalis leaves, brown almond puree underneath red scorpionfish (sour)
- The sourness did not rise to the level of a Peruvian Leche de Tigre (used to prepare ceviche), rather a mellow sourness. The fresh almonds were tender, and it was a perfect counterpoint to the fireworks of decadentia, a quieter marriage of two great ingredients – fresh and impeccably firm scorpionfish, and the taste of fresh almonds.

(Pig’s blood meringue) (5/5)
- Every guest to Mugaritz gets a kitchen tour. In 2010, Mugaritz suffered a devastating fire. But the silver lining was that it allowed the kitchen to be extensively remodelled into the modernist wonder it is today. And the small bite I was served was an expression of the empirical spirit animating the chefs – a pig’s blood meringue.
- Meringues are formed from egg whites because of their albumin content. But egg whites are not the only albumin-rich food available. Another is pig’s blood. The meringue, whipped up from pig’s blood, was seasoned with peppercorn, onion, cocoa and cinnamon. It tasted so much like an egg-white meringue that when told something was afoot with the meringue, I did not even suspect it was because of the composition of the meringue – rather focusing on the condiments.
- While speaking to one of Chef Aduriz’s chefs (he was not in the kitchen that evening), I learned that they were preparing at least 40 different dishes. But they could not have had more than 6-7 tables that evening. I learnt later from reading the Mugaritz book that this was because of the kitchen’s philosophy in only sourcing the best produce – often limited in quantity – and thus each diner would get a personalised menu that would not overlap completely with any other diner’s.

“We set out […] to access the produce provided by nature in the most direct and purest way possible, whether of not we could find it in the markets, regardless of demand, and without any concern for the two conditions usually required of a product in order to ensure profitability for the producer and security for the buyer, namely quantity and reliability (most chefs need to know they’ll get a minimum quantity of an ingredient, year in year out). No, we will not need a lot. No, we will not always need it”. (Aduriz, p. 28)

“We know that there is insecurity in providing exceptional produce. However, the comfort, regularity and consistency offered by the market of supply and demand also makes them all products more or less the same. It evens out the differences that make them unique. But we want those peas. We know that they are not always going to be available. We also know that when we have them, they will be extraordinary. Even if we have so few that half the diners will not be able to try them. We will give them something equally wonderful instead.” (Aduriz, p.28)

The idea: Meringues are formed from albumin. Science!

Lukewarm scallop with sour lentil consommé. (4.75/5)
- A scallop with fermented lentils. The lentil consomme had the sour taste of off-beer, in the most delicious way possible. It had a gorgeous rounded and complete flavor, its viscosity and intensity of taste reminiscent of the best Cantonese soups.
- The scallop had the smoothness and integrity of abalone, and interestingly did not even begin to resolve into strands when cut, as most scallops are wont to do. A high quality combination.

Pear. Honey vinegar and toasted milk. (4.5/5)
- The pear, fragrant and honeyed, hard and crunchy in texture (reminiscent of a calcified Asian pear Pyrus pyrifolia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrus_pyrifolia), was paired with an aggressive sour-honey vinaigrette.
- Two roughnesses (the hardness of the pear, and the sour-sweet of the vinaigrette) cancelled each other out, leaving a pleasant synthesis of texture and taste.

The game at the table; gambling a bite of bread and heavy cream. (4.75/5)
- I played a game with my server Mohamed – we would each have up to three bone pieces, and secretly put 0-3 in our fists. At the same time, we would put forward our fists, and guess what the combined number of bone pieces was. I recalled many childhood games from this exercise.
- If it was for two people, then apparently the winner would get a large helping of caviar, and the loser none – source: http://kuloksilver.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/gehry-arzak-mugaritz-and-hitchcock/
- But anyway, I made the exercise academic by winning 😛
- Milkskin, “caviar” made from algas marinas algae, and cream.
- The idea: Interactive games before food. Game theory in sharing.

Coastal fish with mushroom threads. (4.75/5)
- Seabream, with crisped seabream bones, and mushrooms, in a pil-pil style sauce (garlic a bit more understated than usual)
- To me, it was a showcase of supreme confidence from the kitchen to served crisp bones. Any imperfections in preparation could lead to unpleasant consequences, like getting the bones embedded in the throat. I was very pleased to see that at least one restaurant has attempted to use crisped bones.

Cod tongues in a bone marrow emulsion. (4.5/5)
- Tongue of kokotxas, of the highest melt-in-the-mouth quality, with a garlicky bone marrow sauce. Complementing cubes of salty crisp pork lard, with coriander.

Chicken and lobster Catalan cream. (4.5/5)
- Catalan cream is essentially creme brulee. Here it was savory, not sweet, bursting with seafood – scallop, shellfish, prawn, something orange that was either uni or lobster brain or lobster roe (you can see it pictured) – and topped with phyllo pastry.

Fifth quarter octopus. (4.75/5)
- Octopus, incredibly tender between the individual suckers, was pressure cooked to arrive at that temperature. It put in the pressure cooker, and then skinned of membrane. A textural marvel.
- The idea: Octopus, achieving a balance of tenderness and integrity that you previously thought impossible.

Linking… dip of fried bacon and saffron, cornbread. (4.25/5)
- Corn, bacon, garlic, and aspic jelly with flowers. Saffron added a gingery aftertaste. The tastes were not what you’d call full-bodied. But the idea was novel.
- The idea: The entire restaurant performing a rhythmic ritual all at once

Eucalyptus smoked loin of lamb with its cultivated wool. (4.5/5)
- Lamb with the smell of liquid smoke – black cotton, actually the fuzz from soybean fermentations, inspired by a Southeast Asian soybean dish called “tempeh”. It is a new twist on the “sheep with wool” dish – usually the wool is made of cotton candy (see my post on Borago, Santiago). Here the wool was made with the edible mold.
- The last two dishes (linking, and lamb), while not purely delicious, are signposts to future developments.
- Idea: The fuzz

Frozen apple chippings with mature cheese. (5/5)
- When you first look at this dish, you’d think the shavings were apple, and the crumble on top some crumbly cheese. But it’d be wrong. This is a trompe l’oeil dish.
- The frozen sheets are actually very cold mature cheese, and the crumble and goo on top, processed apple juice. The effect of juxtaposition is that I just tasted an amazing combination of cheese and apple with every bite, trying to get at the nonexistent apple in the frozen cheese sheets, but gaining it only in the toppings. Delicious.

Starched handkerchief of fruit and flowers. (4/5)
- Plum tastes in the rice flour.

Lemon Succade with our herbs from yesterday and today. (5/5)
- A whole candied half of lemon peel (succade), forming a bowl for lemon sherbet. The peel was crisp, and completely without rind. It evoked an egg, playing off egg-lemon similarities.

Caffè latte cookies… Light. (5/5)
- A light ice cream sandwich – room temperature meringue, and cold icecream. One of the best meringue biscuits I’ve tried (up there with atera’s lobster rolls and saltines). Light taste of coffee – latte icecream

An almost impossible bite: sugary porra (3.75/5)
- The rocks which had been on the table throughout the meal, were to be grated over a porra (deep fried pastry stick in Spanish, though a swear word in Portugese), in a throwback to the turf of grass in the first half of the meal. It was made of sugar, cloves, vanilla and star anise.

Mignardises: Seven Deadly Sins (Pride, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth) (5/5)

Pride: A gilded but hollow chocolate, the gold reflected in the surrounding mirrors.

Envy: If I had been two, then one chocolate would have been a big gold one, and the other a small silver one. Who’s going to take the larger? The smaller? Similar concept to the game for caviar above.