Magic Moments in Basque Country

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Durham chef Ricky Moore on finding good food, community, and connections in Spain

I’d never been to the Basque Country, and through my experience eating at restaurants here in the States, just knowing people of that region, and doing my own personal research, I thought it was an appropriate region of Spain [to visit] from a culinary perspective. It was magical—a lot of magical moments. My friend Richard Gruica, a former chef, wanted to transition out of the day-to-day of running a restaurant, and wanted to stay in food, so he decided to partner with chefs and do these Gourmet Vacations offering culinary tours across the globe—Peru is up next. There were 40 people, give or take on the tour. I brought my wife, my daughter of 20, and my son of 16; this was their first big trip abroad.

When we first got there, we went to a famous pintxos bar, Víctor Montes, and everybody connected. It was almost like a jewelry store: All the pintxos were organized in a glass case, and the light shines on them very specifically. And you go up to the bar, you have a drink, and you choose which pintxos you want.

The next day in Bilbao, the restaurant we went to, Kate Zaharra, was down in the valley. I was in awe. The views were breathtaking, just looking over the city. We had a family-style meal, and they served a lot of seafood—local scallops and red shrimp. It was extremely tasty and uber fresh. They served us artichoke stew, artichokes stewed in olive oil with potatoes. The next dish was pil pil, the classic dish of the Basque Country. This was a fisherman’s dish—cod cooked in olive oil and they noticed that when the ship rocked, [the oil] emulsified.

In San Sebastian, people didn’t start eating until 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. We went to one pintxo bar that specialized in mushrooms and shrimp on a stick: Bar Ángel on the famed Calle Laurel, the street of pintxos. You’ve got this earthy mushroom seasoned with garlic and salt, and the shrimp are right on top, and as it gets cooked, the juice of the shrimp goes down to the mushrooms, and then that juice goes into that bread. That was the beauty of going to Basque Country for me: simplicity. Yes, we went to a Michelin-starred restaurant, Ikaitz, on New Year’s Eve. That was wonderful. But I just want to eat the food that people eat, you know?

The alleys got so packed. It was culturally correct to be crowded in a space eating little bites of food and bumping into each other without saying excuse me. Young, old, they’re all out at night, eating bites of food, drinking wine. I feel this sort of longing for the idea that we can all go out, hang out, and enjoy each other, and not be concerned about all this other stuff. I try not to act like I’m a vacationer. I feel like I lived down the street.

I had this wonderful steak-eating experience at Casa Julián in Tolosa. This is the place to go to in Spain for steak, period. Anthony Bourdain went here back in the day—a very modest place on a side street. We all got these roasted peppers that were like candy, the first thing that hit the table. The steaks are cut to order, and they’re seasoned with a whole lot of salt. Once it’s cooked, they take it off the grill, put it on a cutting board, trim some of the yellow fat, rub the steak [with the fat] as if it were butter to add that moisture back in, and slice the steak and put it on your plate. It was magnificently good. It goes back to this idea that I enjoy: There’s nothing wrong with going to a restaurant that does one thing really well.

The last restaurant we went to, Bodegas Lecea, was another family-style meal, where we had stewed potatoes with chorizo. And right away, when I tasted that dish, I thought about growing up here in North Carolina eating barbecue potatoes. What we call barbecue potatoes is pretty much potatoes stewed in a stock, and you add hot sauce, barbecue sauce, and onions, and cook it down. This reminded me of that so much, a stew of potatoes and sausage. And it was good, too.

I’m sort of a student of other people’s culture. I want to always go to the origin. This trip, independently of anyone else, was all me wanting to continue to explore, to continue to educate myself on different styles of cooking, and find common denominators, because there’s different ingredients, there’s different techniques, but everybody’s palate is pretty much the same. Either it’s good or it’s bad, right? I’m always looking for what makes this region’s food delicious and how can I connect with it. I can connect with the pil pil dish. I grew up eating salted fish. We handled it the same way. Those are the things that I pick up as I travel and eat and explore. Just finding parallels, finding connections, finding thingsthat you can associate with—and then you craft it into your own.