And now for something completely different: the one in which Anthony Bourdain took in the sights and sounds — and food — of the coastal city of San Sebastián in Spain’s Basque Country, famous for its expansive views and fresh seafood.
And now for something completely different — a Parts Unknown outing that changed tack from the darker directions taken in eighth-season outings like Buenos Aires and Rome. San Sebastián, which followed the season-opening Los Angeles to kick off Parts Unknown’s ninth season in May 2017, found Bourdain in a more relaxed frame of mind. And while he looked visibly aged from the series opener in Myanmar just four years earlier, he talked about how the Basque Country had become his happy place, culinarily speaking (is that even a word?), from the rolling green hills and craggy white cliffs of Spain’s Bay of Biscay to the gourmand paradise of Donostia-San Sebastián, just 12 miles (20 km) from the Spain-France border, with its population of 450,000 people — virtually all of them foodies, if Bourdain’s take is to be trusted. And why wouldn’t it be?
As Bourdain himself noted in his Parts Uknown Field Notes (https://explorepartsunknown.com/san-sebastian/bourdains-field-notes-san-sebastian/), San Sebastián and the surrounding region has more “outrageously good” (his words) restaurants per square mile than just about anywhere in Europe. “Even the bad restaurants are good,” he said, which might sound somewhat fatuous but then that was Bourdain in his pomp. “San Sebastián is a place I make as much television as possible,” he added, though it only takes a few minutes of screen time, if that, to see how the culture and the food affected him. Truly, madly, deeply.
“One afternoon, hungry and at loose ends,” Bourdain recalled, “I stumbled lazily into one of those tourist-friendly restaurants with all the warning signs: an overwhelmingly non-local clientele, menus in English and Spanish, large colour photos of the menu items posted outside, and proximity to a popular tourist site.
“I ended up eating a delicious order of morcilla sausage, followed by some braised beef cheeks. And I was happy.”
Note his eye for detail there, from his caustic assessment of “tourist-friendly” eateries (“an overwhelmingly non-local clientele”) to the culture clash of English and Spanish menus garlanded with large colour photos of the menu items posted on the sidewalk for all to see (“Today’s specials…”) to the observation that, hey, the morcilla sausage and braised beef cheeks are, well, delecioso. And not just the sausage but the jamon — jambon to the French, or ham to you and me — the wild mushrooms, the grilled turbot, and “the last squid of the season.”
“Everyday eating feels like one long bounce from great little place to another,” Bourdain noted, best sampled with friends.
“As I must in every episode I shoot in San Sebastián,” he continued in his Field Notes, “I reconnect with two chefs who feel, by now, like family to me: Juan Mari and Elena Arzak, who have been keeping the generations-long tradition of excellence at their eponymous restaurant alive while moving gastronomy forward—always—in exciting new ways. …
“Now and again, wherever I am in the world, Juan Mari calls me, and we somehow manage to have a warm conversation in a tortured mix of French, Spanish, and Pidgin English. They will always be my guides and mentors and my friends. Since the death of my father, I found myself looking to Juan Mari to fill that hole. Though I am sure he would prefer to see himself as an older brother …”
The delectability of Basque Country cuisine is not unique to one man and one chef, either: There are more Michelin-starred restaurants in San Sebastián per capita than anywhere on planet Earth. Who knew?
For the benefit of Parts Unknown viewers looking on from CNN, Bourdain dined on Iberico ham with mushrooms, crab tartlets, seared wild mushrooms and foie gras with egg yolk (a house specialty) at Ganbara; rock prawn (head and body cooked separately, naturally, head grilled and body served semi-ceviche), grilled squid with onion-green pepper sauce — the only way to have it — cocochas (hake fish), and grilled turbot at Elkano; marinated prawns on lemongrass and mint with beetroot and crunchy krill, roast pigeon with mastic and potato, and grilled monkfish with pecan paste at Arzak; and seared mushrooms with egg yolk and pine nuts, grilled tuna, peas in a consommé of Iberico ham, and squid at Casa Urola, among other eateries.
There’s an olde Basque saying: We are because we were. It’s an old culture, Bourdain reminds us to this day, dating back to long before the Roman invasions, with its own language and history handed down orally over generations.
It wouldn’t be Parts Unknown if it was just about the food: Bourdain also found time to talk history and anthropology respectively with Xabier Agote, shipwright and founder of the Basque Maritime Museum, and Olatz González Abrisketa, documentarian and professor of social anthropology at Spain’s University of the Basque Country.
If there’s an overriding theme to the hour that Bourdain no doubt wanted us — all of us — to take with us in the years after San Sebastián first aired, all those years ago now, it was this: that despite centuries of misunderstanding, culture clash and different languages, we can get along, if we just knuckle down and work harder. The Basque border separating Spain from France, for example.
“Things are different here. The relationship between Basque and French cultures has always been more graceful, less contentious, and you can see it, and feel it, and taste it at the table.”
Bon appétit. Disfrute de su comida.
Supplementary reading:
https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-san-sebastian/
