Hey guys, I’m back in Portland tonight, super late. However, whole I was in the airport ay both Madrid and JFK, I finished some entries for this Spain trip blog of mine. I will post a few over the next couple days.

Restaurant Kokotxa

Wow, I actually took pictures during my lunch here at Kokotxa in San Sebastian. Sitting down at 2, I didn’t leave till 4, so that was nice. The tasting menu was really brilliant, and I got to ask the chef a few questions after the meal.

The first app was a little glass ramekin filled with a marinated mussle salads, topped with am espuma of cauliflower. Lovely. The little jar of perfect bites is a great way to start off a meal, and was definatly a trend at all the nice places I got to go too.

The next was a salad of warm octopus and jamon iberico, with herbs and mango. The fruit harmonized the octo and the jamon.

There was a beautiful dish of seared scallops and txiperones, baby squids, with root veg and a spinach oil that was just fantastic in that the seafood was so nice and sweet.

The liquid Spanish omelet was really inventive, with a salad of spider crab, or txongurro, done in the donosian style, with brandy, a little tomato, its own roe, and onion. Pretty strong, bit delicious. The liquid omelet was actually charged potato and egg puree this was on top of the spider crab, and a little nest of the smallest whole shrimp ever, fried crisp, sat on top of everything. Every bite was perfect, complex and full of textures.

The fish was bacala, seared skin sitting next to little rigatoni pasta filled with minced calimari.

The roasted venison loin could not have been more perfect, the ultimate medium rare sous vid, then seared and served with a almond paste and pineapple pieces. The trend I’d putting tropical fruit into meat sauces seems to work very well. It’s all about the sweet, rich, and acid balance. The fruit also gives the sauce a boost in texture.

Both desserts were excellent, the last of which had the most wonderful spheres of strawberries, which the chef, Dani explained later to me was a mix of sugar, gluconolactat, set in a sodium alginate bath.

Everything started off good, the train was intimate and my apartment was blocks away from the station. The problem was ‘friendly rentals’, the people I rented from. They wanted my payment for the apparent up front, which is cool, but they wanted it in cash! Not cool. I don’t know about you, but when I roll around Europe, through two train stations, I’m not carrying 1,000 euro of cash. Any way, everything got figured out just in time for me to catch a mini flu virus or something. I was  laying low in my apartment for 2 days until I was ready to rock. It’s like ‘water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink’, right. Oh well, I have a bunch of days here, and want to be able to power through a few awesome tasting menus with gusto.
The first day I could stomach food, (or anything for that matter.  I hate it when you can’t even drink water with confidence), I walked along the river that cuts the city into east and west, or oldtown and Gros, the east side. You can walk all the way to the Atlantic ocean at the tip of San Sebastian and watch waves smash against the earth. It’s pretty exciting.  There are some giant, modernist cubes at the bluffs, where I later have a fun tapas experience:

Cafeteria nineu at the big lit-up cubeon the bluffs is pretty interesting. You can hear the opera show going on next door, and seems to be filled with rich.people on vacation. To be honest, this whole town is rich people on vacation. Or old men drinking all afternoon with their old man friends and bartender. They use a pager to let you know when your food is up. The pager has a number, but everyone in Spain seems to be able to remember what everyone has ordered. I wonder if a fast paced tapas bar in Portland could handle verbal order, and having customers repeat back what they ordered when they are done and want to pay. It’s all part of the honor system and respect for the restaurant you are in.  Had a little trio of tapas: Endive impregnated with Roquefort, ragu of crab in the donozia style, tomato, and a little rice with pork trotter and ear, and a glass of wine, 10E. 

Walking around old town is pretty much what you do all afternoon. It’s pretty small, but you seem to discover place that you didn’t remember were the the last tome you passed by. One of these places was A Fuego Negro, a modern tapas place that Manuel had told me about back when I visited Viridian Farms .

Found a fuego Negro, a tapas bar that is super modern. I remember Manuel showed me there cookbook, I’m buying one.
Salmorejo, frozen into half circles, then fused. Rolled in ganach/cocoa butter with pimiento infused into it. Allowed to defrost.  The butter holds a shell, then you crack it in your mouth, and get a capsule effect without all the molecular stuff. Awesome 
Olives filled with red vermouth gel.
Caesar salad in a cup. Dressing off to the side, isi’ed!  Ajo blanco in little dollops, encapsulation with cacao butter again, with littlepaprika for color.
Cured and pressed off yolk, slices in mixed salad.
Stuff like that. There is this mushroom soup that comes deconstructed: herbs and crunchies in the bottom of a rocks glass, a piece of clear, edible plastic covers the top, and there are a few TINY deepfried shrimp on top of the edible plastic. The bartender then pours, from an antique tea pot, hot mushroom soup onto the shrimp and the plastic. The heat melts away the plastic instantly, causing the little shrimp to fall onto the glass, which is filled with the soup. Wow.

Gresca was a wonderful little Resto recommended to by by the Somm at a place called monvinic. Check out their website. The wine cellar there is enormous and there while wine list is in iPad-like tablets so you can check out details about your wine, and refine your searches with a bunch if different criteria. Pretty awesome, and it definatly made me want to drink am extra glass, just for fun.
Anyway, he suggested Gresca because I told him I was a cook from usa and he thought Gresca word be perfect for me. He was right. Of couse, befor that I had to have a Hendrix and tonic at Dry Martini. Super old school speakers kinda place where everyone was dresses nice. Check this out.

Gresca was tiny, with only 2 girls working it, that little kitchen put out some of the best stuff I’ve had all trip. Starting out with a warm file of Sardine, covered with see-through slices of cured iberian pork belly, a beautiful slice of cured Foie torchon, with little crunchies of nut and a borage flower, suspended over ‘escabeche’ of onion stock and sherry vinegar. Really nice. The Spanish love their foie gras soup. 
There was a nice warm salad of cured fresh bacalao with early green peas, a piece of sweetbread with a lemon and butter emulation, and some excellent desserts. Red fruit sorbet, held together with either gelatin or something, so that it could be cut into a think sheet, like a blanket, and places over berries and a chestnut mousse. Executed perfectly. And the last thing was a crazy fake half of a coconut.  Pineapple juice was the sauce, the shell was n2o’ed coconut milk, and the crust was coffee, chocolate and shredded coconut. All this with a bottle of Do Ferraro Albarino.

This is the quinessential bar, pure old school, with bar men that welcomed me in my second visit, and asked me how my day went. Like it was a hard day!

Boqueria market, I don’t think I have to write anything about this place, ill just let the pics do the talking, and explain later!

Not a town known for their tapas,(Catalunyas are more sit down eaters) Barcelona has actually surprised me. The fish and seafood here is really impressive and plentiful.
Here are some notes from the field:

Totally note-worthy how the bar at the super swank oommm hotel works. A lot like my ideal kitchen. They have a central island, surrounded on all sides by the actual bar. They glass up there and there is a double well whew their juices and purees are. Very efficient

At the Gulfo de Bizkaia, in the Born area of Barcelona , a modern basque bar, you just get a plate and start grabbing Pintxos and montaditos, and count the toothpicks afterwords. Wow, cream cheese and shaved bonito.
Bacalau stewed with tomato and cebollias.

Tapas 24, where I get my coffee, is owned by the same guy who has comerce 24, carles abellan,  in the Born. They have this semi-open kitchen, really small but looks efficient. The cooks are kind of hidden behind a bunch of produce, old school wire egg baskets, hanging braids of tomatoes, a few baskets of nice looking veg, and a wall of eggs! Reminds me a little of the size of Bar Avignon’s kitchen, and the open produce feel of Evoe.
Lots of little black boards with titles of things on them, or menu items with prices. Pretty clever really, creating this small space that is seemingly packed with food and drink. Also, I think everywhere in Spain as a really well stocked liquor selection.
At tapas 24, they seem to almost do breakfast food, specializing in estrelladas, or little tortillas, personal sized, with some pretty cool things you can add to them, like foie, mushrooms, butifarra and other stuff, like building your own omelettes.

Went to cal pec for lunch, or breakfast, cuz I got out is the hotel at around 11:30  walked back down to El Born. They have this huge promenade, lined with palm trees and sculptures. At cal pec, which was described on the internet as this horrible place where the service was abusive and nothing was good, but was described to me by my good friend Dave Siegel As being full of tourists but worth it. To be honest, no tourist, just regular customers. I also discovered immediately that if you let the bar know your a cook, everything changes. It was great. This is a place with user fresh seafood, and they cook it on different ways. There are specific dishes, however, its not a place where you order a fish or seafood and they add you how you want it cooked, al vapor, a la plancha, frieta this kind of thing. I let them order for me, and got clams with minced Serrano, white wine and parsley.  Then a mixed fry of Sardines, little fish, calimari and tiny little whole shrimp, of which you could eat all of them, head and all. Very surprised with this. They were the best of the mix.

This post is a few days in the making, I finally finished writing it yesterday. I haven’t wrote this much since college, maybe not even as much then!  I’m an art major after all. Vale.
The last day of fusion was really fun. I felt comfortable where I was and getting there pk the metro was easy to the point like  I felt like a regular commuter, going to work at 7:30 and coming home at 4.  The last day had a lot of presentations about business, the highlight before we went to lunch (which sucked beyond sucking) was by the Roca brothers, who have the El Cellar Can Roca.  These guys are fucking geniuses, and their presentation wad pretty muck about how fucking awesome there catering branch is, pretty much making the point that there catered food is better that most michelin restos around the world. And you know what, they’re right.
They presented a problem with catering: the raw oyster and the litany of problems that u brings with it during a catering situation. Their solution? Cryo vacing them, bringing them to a high tack facility that uses huge tubs if water to pressurize the oysters, basically cooking them a tiny bit with pressure, so that they are no longer technically raw, but appear raw. Did you see that article in the ny times about lobster and stuff being cooked with water pressure so that their meat slopes right out of their shell? Google it, its breaking crazy, and that’s how the Roca brothers cook oysters for catering events. Spain is cool.
Then they showed us a dish they do at their Resto based on cold, smooth and fresh. It was a salad of various cool things, like apple purees, cider geles, greens and a eucaliptus water, from juices eucaliptus, that gets evaporated into a distillation of pure water, then gets chilled down to -5c, which is below freezing, but because is a special fridge that uses pressure, the liquid remains a liquid, instead if becoming an ice cube. Then, at the table, it is poured on the salad plate, creating an upside down ice cicle, the super cold water touching the air, raising its temp to -3 or -2, which is ice cold, and as the water is poured, like a drip castle, an inverted ice cicle forms. Holy shit.

Restaurant ABaC is liked in a hotel with the same name, a ten minute drive from where I’m staying in Barcelona, which means that its pretty far away. The hotel itself seemed like it was beyond 5 stars fancy, and so did the restaurant. Gorgeous versace charges, awesome service, everything name with a chrome lid, which I still think is kinda funny. So the food:
Starting our with a palette cleanser of Apple cider foam over a licorice gel, to smoke trapped under a bell jar, with tomato water consomme and 2 little spoons with bread crumbs and gnocchi made with tomato and methyl cellulos.  Aroma was the key here, as the smoke made you think of toast which made you think that what you were eating was simply a bite of freshly made pan amb tomaquet, instead of smoky air and tomato water. Brilliant. Also, I’m sorry I didn’t take any pictures, but everything looked awesome and modern in that new Spanish way.

The Spanish love their egg yolk apps, and ABaC’s was pretty amazing. Hidden under a beyond thin toast of bread, so thin it have to be like a bread ‘tuile’ (tabla kitchen, get on this!) was an egg yolk sitting on smooth potato foam, like what reused to serve octopus with here at the Resto. Around this little stack were carefully placed cubes of pork stock, chips of Serrano ham, a lose truffle dressing, and its of pork belly. I know it all sounds over the top, bit it was so simple in the mouth, porky and eggy and a little crunchy and smooth. Perfect.
He last item that stuck out to me was the fish. I’m not a huge fan of sous vide fish, bit this piece of sole almost had a texture of being cured. It was very meaty, which for sole, doesn’t happen. Sole is usually soft and flakey, and usually bland. This dish was tasty and had a lot of character.

Sole

cooked at 55 degrees for 4 minutes.  How bout that

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Here is a quick collection of notes I have taken during meals in Spain. I will say that it is note having my phone with me to write down stuff I see and eat around town. This post has derailed from places on both Madrid and Barcelona.

Gotta get 1/2 raciones when at bars, or you will have way too much in front of you, and wot be able to order other stuff.

It seems like the fancy tapas bars are slow, and all the neighborhood joints are full, except for those places that just suck.

Portions are big for how much they are. Basically there is no need to look at prices on a menu, mostly because the quality is there, especially for the cured meat items.  9E is worth it for awesome salumi. 

The espresso flows here pretty well, and seems to be made pretty well. I have no idea when lunch starts here, but I think its at like 2 or 3 
Mojama de atun, cured tuna loin, served room temp, way less salty than I thought it would be. I had
Cecina de vaca, its like Spain’s bresaola. A bit lighter and dryer.

At the venta el buscon, they were mostly Italian, and would call their bar orders out, loudly. It was actually pretty cool, the idea of being loud, but efficient, so that by the tome you, as a waiter, got to the end of the bar, the bartender was already pouring your first beer, or Cana.  I just realized that the calling out of orders the treats the bartender like a line cook, fuck yea. That could get hardcore when he starts getting raged on. And the servers need to remember what they are ordering, too. 

There mussels, or mejionnes, al vapor, or steamed, all came on the half shell. That’s crazy. And awesome, cuz then you dont need a spoon if you got a shell to use instead!
Just got to Barcelona and hit a basque tapas place on the main drag, de Gracia, then walked for moles down to the bottom of the city to visit quimet y quimet, a montadito bar that should probably only hold 15 people, but when j arrived there were at least 30 people crammed on there, yelling out orders to the 3 family members who were moving as fast as ive ever seen cooks move, talking the whole tome, communicating what was going in. They room all pests verbaly and kept pieces of paper both in front of them so they could keep adding your tab up as you ordered more. Amazing and delirious. BTW, montadito are basically Spanish crustini, only piled high with things like canned eynacinger piquillo peppers, caviar, confit of onion, dried tomato spread, and on and on and on.

After the first night of Madrid Fusion, I saw that La Broche was hosting Carlos Cracco, a 2 starred michelin chef from Milan.  I was excited both to check out the food of some guy who’s Resto I would probably never go to in such a beautiful space as La Broche.
As you can extrapolate from the name, the restaurant is all white, with thick white walls and tablecloths that pile up at the base, like when painters use sheets to cover furniture when they are working. Basically, the only color km the room was the food. This was my first fancy dinner in Spain!
The menu was pretty amazing, I will post a pic of it, but here are few notes I took.
La broche
Bird cream or, pate in a little squeeze tube, you squirt into little toasts. They are in those silver metal tapas apparatuses.caeser salad bite in a little plastics baggie that dissolved in my mouth instantly, leaving a single perfect note of a Caesar salad. ,  A little plate for your knife and fork, chopstick at a sushi bar-style. Sesame on the beautiful shrimp was perfect.  Shrimp were sous vide in campari! for 24 hrs, no cooking. They took on an excellent semi cured texture. I have to use that later.  Pasta was under, another 20 seconds, but there was a cream with lemon grass or lemon verbina. Turned out to be mastic, Greek tree resin. Gotta find some if that!
Also,
salicornia, or sea beans, nice and semisoft and salty. That mastic  cream though… so simple. Sous vide veal, a nice fatty cut, but I learned from the great chef, Carlos cracco, it was loin, not like a breast, with a paste of annise and capers on it, seared a little, with a little turnips puree and julianned celery root. Simple and juicy and good. There could have been a bit of acid somewhere.
Dessert was actually exceptional, with a pistachio mousse on the middle of a pistachio caramel on the top and the bottom. A nice brush of pistachio on the plate and a cool box, made of pralime, hollow, filled with the same mousse. The chocolate was like a molded fudge, but a little smoother and east to spread. Perrty impressive, like flourless cake that was under cooked but had enough butter or gel that it held its form.