Best Basque Restaurant Spain

Guest Author: Jeanine Barone

Spain is one of my specialties and I’ve visited the Basque Country many times. Etxebarri is one of my favorite restaurants because everything about it is unexpected, starting with its location in a hamlet so small that the bus driver didn’t even know where to drop me off because he said there wasn’t anything to see in the area. Thirty minutes from Bilbao, Chef Victor Arguinzoniz transforms humble grilling into haute cuisine. Almost everything is grilled or wood-oven roasted in Etxebarri (”new home”), a restaurant in the hard-to-find hamlet of Axpe in the emerald green Atxondo Valley. Yet Etxebarri attracts a diverse clientele: from locals drinking tart white wine (txaloli) poured at arm’s length overhead in the rustic first-floor bar to the well-heeled arriving by helicopter to sample the ethereal and ever-changing eight-course tasting menu — baby octopus and eels, rare sirloin, Palamos shrimp — in the upstairs dining room. As minimalist as the cuisine, this space has large windows overlooking grazing sheep and Anboto, the stunning 1,300-meter limestone peak.

Arguinzoniz is a creative, meticulous chef who invented unique cookware, such as a laser-sculpted pan, allowing him to grill the ungrillable: baby eels, sea cucumbers and risotto. The food is pure and close to the earth, with Arguinzoniz selecting eggs and vegetables from his farm, maintaining live seafood in kitchen tanks, preparing chorizo using some of his pigs and, every morning, gathering wood to make coal: oak for seafood and fish (and sometimes olive branches) and old grape vines for meat. Where else but humble Etxebarri would you find grilled strawberry tarts with mushroom ice cream.

Thank you very much to my special guest author, Jeanine Barone, travel writer and the author of J the Travel Authority. You can follow her on twitter @jcreaturetravel

Things to do in Spain

Website: Etxebarri

Extebarri

Plaza San Juan 1
Axpe, Spain
011-34-94-658-3042

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