A Fish For One, Please
By: Jake Potashnick
Tags: Food, Fish, Grilling, Spain, Travel

First, the turbot is presented tableside, raw and glistening, like a fine bottle of wine, or a diamond necklace. The fish is taken away and grilled. When it returns, the fish has been cooked whole and is sitting in a plate of its own juices. The top filet is taken apart and plated first. The top filet is eaten. The bottom filet is taken apart and presented for consumption. The bottom filet is eaten. Every last bit is scraped and taken apart from the fish and presented. Every last bit is eaten. Thus, is a meal at Elkano in its simplest form. In more complex terms a dining experience at Elkano is a meal about the relationship that one family has with the ocean around it, the intricately difficult interplay between fire and subject (both cook and fish), and finding perfection in the simple.

My flight arrived in Bilbao early, but the summer sun was up already. I found my rental car and began to maneuver my way through the cliff lined coastal region towards Getaria. I have arrived in the Basque country in Spain for five straight days of gastronomic pleasure. This first night will be spent at fish haven Elkano, tomorrow’s lunch is at the renowned steak asador Casa Julian, the next day will be lunch at two Michelin star modernist pilgrimage Mugaritz, followed by a return to Bilbao for meals at contemporary art inspired Nerua in the Guggenheim and three Michelin star Azurmendi. All of these meals with be accentuated and offset by tapas, or pintxos as they’re called in the region, eaten standing at different well-worn bar tops. I have a list of more than ten pintxos bars to patron in San Sebastian, each having its own specialty. I told myself that this trip was for research, to expand my knowledge, but really I am just a greedy child eager to experience all the carnal pleasures of the region.

The only planning mistake made for the trip was starting the first night at Elkano. This night of my arrival would ruin every meal after. Not that the other restaurants were bad, many of them were fantastic, as was the pintxos, but no lover can ever be as sweet after you’ve met the love of your life and let her get away.

There were bites later in the trip that would come close to breakthroughs. Take Azurmendi first, a breathtaking property sitting atop a mountain and overlooking the vineyard owned by the Chef. The building itself is a massive hall designed with the highest targets of sustainability in mind. The meal started in the kitchen itself for their signature egg and truffle bite. An egg yolk sits on a spoon. A cook takes a syringe, carefully breaks the membrane of the egg yolk, and sucks out half of the yellow rich filling.

A cook prepares the yin and yang truffle egg yolk

Another already filled syringe is inserted into the same membrane hole and a piping hot truffle stock is squeezed inside. The result is a yin and yang egg yolk, slowly cooking in its own membrane. Thirty seconds later the yolk is eaten in one bite as an explosion of earthy-muddy-nostril blocking truffle accompanied by the flow of lightly cooked runny egg yolk which coats the mouth like a glove of fatty richness.

Another beautiful dish from Azurmendi

At extreme-modernist Mugaritz a special dish came late in the meal, during a presentation of pork prepared in three ways. Two of the ways were actually pork. The third was an abstract black mass, which upon closer inspection looked more like the black layers of a laminated croissant than it did like meat. “Nori”, the server explained, “pressed in pork fat.” Thin slices of seaweed layered with lard, pressed, and cooked. The result was the most insanely delicious pulled pork I’ve ever had. Dripping with pork fat, it was like eating strands of braised shoulder, shredded by my fork. The nori added just a touch of saline assistance, but the way it mimicked the texture and chew of pork momentarily broke my brain.

Nori “pulled pork” at Mugaritz

Eating at Casa Julian is like walking into history. The tables are in the back room of what resembles a shabby tavern. Stonewalls enclose a space stuffed full with dusty wine bottles and piled boxes. In the far corner there is a small grill built into the wall. The grill has two rack layers, with the coals and wood on the bottom. The grill man rotates around steaks with vibrant yellow strips of fat cap, each steak covered in massive piles of flaky sea salt.

The grill at Casa Julian

Ironically, this Spanish steak house used mostly German grass fed meat, rather than local beef. The exception to the German steak was local ox meat that they currently had available in-house. The oxen meat was not exactly tender, but the chew exposed a flavor that was almost wild in its gaminess. There was a rich beefiness, but the fat was clean and not overpowering. I picked up the plate and poured the juices into my order of wild mushrooms that had been grilled and topped with a soft poached egg.

Wild mushrooms at Casa Julian

On the side was an order of the restaurant’s famed piquillo peppers, cut open, de-seeded, and spread flat on a platter sizzling with olive oil. Each pepper was like eating a mouthful of sweet and fatty paprika powder, little bits of flaky crystallized salt dissolving slowly on the palate. They were delightful.

Confit peppers at Casa Julian

In fact, all these meals were delightful and thoughtful and damn tasty. But they were no match for that first night.

I pulled into Getaria with a few hours to spare before my meal at Elkano. Elkano is a sizable establishment painted all white, which sits between a Y in the road, like a miniature version of New York’s flat iron building.

Elkano

The grill station is on the left-hand side of the building, directly next to the entrance. The outdoor grill is slightly indented into the wall, hidden from curious onlookers. The grill must be at least fifteen feet long stretching along the building. To the right of the grill is a stack of wood for restocking. On the left side of the grill sits a small table with mis en place for the Chef, and below the worktable hangs a series of fish cage racks. These racks are a specialty of the region. Metal cages are welded in the shape of a fish made of four to five horizontal bars attached along one concave vertical bar. An identical shape is set on top and they are bound together at the “head” end of the fish so it can be opened and closed on a joint. The fish cooked in the cage never actually touches the grates of the grill it sits on, and can be easily flipped from side to side.

The grill at Elkano. The fish racks rest below.

I watched from my hotel room across the street as the last lunch guests dally on the patio over a glass of bubbly white wine. I walked down to the harbor and wandered around the docked fishing boats. The water beyond the harbor was rough, dark clouds hanging over the ocean from afar, but in town the sky was still blue with a warm breeze flowing through.

That night at Elkano I was shown to my table near the back of the elongated restaurant, the interior decorated with kitschy fishing memorabilia. I ordered a bottle of local white wine called txakoli for ten Euros. The bottle was refreshingly cold and particularly dry with a light effervescence. This is table wine for the local Spaniards, nothing fancy, and certainly not aged. A server comes over to talk about what I’d like to order. I ask for an appetizer of crab served in the shell and then a turbot if they have one available.

The menu at Elkano offers a selection of local fish available for grilling. All are sold by market price of the day. The most prized and most famous, the reason diners flock to Elkano, the king and queen of Basque fish, is the humble turbot. With a meaty white flesh and rough camouflaged skin, turbot is a biometrically flat fish that lies on the floor of the ocean waiting for prey to pass by. I’ve worked with the fish before, normally cooked slowly as a filet with the skin on. The skin is peeled off and trashed just before serving due to the rough spikes that cover the surface to act as protection. Turbot is a tricky fish, overcooked and it is dry and mealy, undercooked and the fish fibers are too dense to chew.

I was made aware beforehand that they do not normally let solo diners have a whole grilled turbot, for even a small fish is quite large. I do my best pouty face in hopes of gaining sympathy. The server looks at me with hesitancy.

“It was a very bad day on the sea.” Elkano works with a very specific fleet of fishermen, just the boats I had seen in the harbor earlier. The day’s catch is what can be served, no more. Rumor has it that the Chef stays up at night just to watch the online GPS trackers of the boats, knowing their level of desperation to find a catch based on how far out to sea they venture, and thus what kind of fish will arrive the next morning. “We only got 13 turbot, and none of them are small.”

“What is the smallest size you have?”

“I think there is one that is 2 kg”, about 4 pounds, “let me check with the kitchen if it’s been taken.”

A short time later a different server arrives at my table. He wears formal attire and floats around the dining room with a bit of superiority. This must be the son of the owner, the heir to the throne. He is bald with a shiny-waxed head, a very warm smile, and wearing an expensive and ornate timepiece on his arm. He had none of the frantic energy of the servers who dashed around the room from table to table behind him.

“So I hear you would like a turbot?” he asked.

“Very badly.”

“Well I’ve got one for you, but it’s pretty big. About 2 kg, rough day at sea you know. My suggestion would be to just have the fish, no appetizer.”

“Alright, I’ll take your word for it!” I’m thrilled that I’ll get a turbot, feeling like I’ve pulled off a heist, and surprised by the honesty of the man’s down sell of the appetizer.

“Si, and most important is call me over when the fish arrives. I would like to personally show you how to eat it.” I feel both taken care of and a touch condescended to. I think I know how to eat a fish.

A silver tray comes out with my deceased raw fish on it. The turbot is maybe a foot long, just a touch shorter in width. The skin has a patchy muddled gray and dark green complexion like military camouflage. The tray is summoned back to the kitchen where it will make its way onto the grill.

One of the great secrets of Elkano is their grill marinade. As the fish is cooked in its cage, moved from one section of coals to another and flipped from time to time, it is regularly sprayed with a mysterious liquid from a squeeze bottle. Some claim it’s a mix of oil and the txakoli that I’m currently drinking. Others claim vinegar or lemon juice or fish fumet. All that’s agreed upon is that the mix is a bit of local oil and a bit of something acidic. When the grilled fish arrives it sits in a gelatinous pooling of its own juices and the residual marinade that has dripped off.

My turbot at Elkano

I sat patiently drinking my wine until roughly twenty minutes later when the platter was brought and presented. My fish sat there with smoke still rolling of the body, slightly shrunken from cooking, the fins hanging over the edge of the tray. The eyes were now murky white, while the skin had bubbled, cracked, and charred. The whole beast sat in a pool shimmering yellow liquid. The entire table suddenly smelled of the ocean and charcoal in equal measure, like a dense sea fog moving through the air. The man in the fine suit either saw or sensed the display and walked over. He politely excused my server who was about to take the platter away to be broken down in the kitchen into portions. Instead, he stood at the table with a fork and spoon and took me through piece by piece. First, he grabbed my attention as he used his own body for an explanatory display.

“This,” he said, as he pointed to the two breasts of his chest and then to the filets at the center of the fish, “is for the children.

This,” now he pointed with both hands up and down his hips, then moving on the fish to show the meaty frills that line the fins along the side of the filets, “is for the parents.”

And this,” now pointing to his own head and cheeks, “is for the grandparents. The prized part.”

He took the fork and spoon and lifted off the skin, placing a large piece on the side of my plate. He then ran the spoon along the backbone and carefully lifted off a filet, which glistened with gelatin and juices as he sets it on the plate. Next, he pulled off a row of the fin frills, looking like little meat barbs, and sets them down in a pile. He dug out the cheek and set it beside the frills. He then pulled out the eyeballs to dig out a piece of pure collagen hidden behind the socket. Finally, he cracked open the back bone and took out a small gelatinous ball that looked like a snow globe crystal, and placed it on the plate, explaining that this was the bone marrow. He tilted the platter so that all the juices ran to one end. He then whisked vigorously with a fork until the drippings and secret house marinade emulsified together into a creamy sauce, naturally thickened by the cooling coagulating proteins from the fish. He spooned the sauce over my plate and wished me good eating. “You can do the next side on your own” he said with a subtle bow, and then walked away.

My plate was glistening, shining in the light, glossy from the sauce and juices still running out of the hot fish. I started with the skin, a piece of turbot I had thought to be inedible. The rough exterior has been broken down by the grilling, lightly charred and torn in parts from the lick of the grill, leaving behind a tender fish jelly, the fat layer underneath having rendered into the meat. The skin had a gentle and pleasant chew, and tasted heavily of the absorbed acidic marinade.

I moved on to the filet next. The flesh was perfectly cooked, moist and full of flavor. The texture gave clue to the fact that this has been caught just that morning, rigid and firm, still full of unbroken down amino acids and proteins from the struggle for survival with the fishermen. The frills are like the dark meat to the filet’s light meat, while the cheek eats like a piece of steak, meaty and dense. At this point my lips were practically glued together by the concentration of gelatin, my fingers were sticky and adhering to one another. I’d given up the pretense of using the fork and spoon as expertly as my host did. I used my fingers to remove the remaining backbone to get access to the rest of the filet on the underside. I poured myself another glass of wine and had a hard time getting the bottle unstuck from my hand after pouring.

The entire fish quickly dissipated away. Each bite revealed what perfect cooking could be. A fresh fish sprayed with a little acid and oil and attentively grilled had transformed into something much grander and royal than the sum of its parts. There were no parlor tricks, no chemical reactions, and no imported proteins used during this meal. The simple, done well, is a more revelatory experience than the difficult done fine, for with the simple there is no room for error and no way to cover up a mistake. The platter now in front of me was a pile of bone. I was stuffed to the brim and yet ravenous for more. Succulent flesh, just a touch of smoke and acid, firm and fresh, is a rare thing to find done so well.

“Are you content?” the Maitre’d asked.

“More than you could imagine.” I’m past content. I am nurtured. I am enriched. I’m quite a bit drunk.

I wander across the street from the restaurant to my hotel, stopping to watch the Chef on the grill for a few moments. The time was late but he was still busy, flipping and spraying fish, moving coals around with a large metal shovel. I did not stay too long to watch. Sometimes it’s better not to know how the magic happens, but simply enjoy the trick.

The next day I went out and bought myself a fish cage. The welded cage sat on the passenger seat of my little rental car, there with me before and after every other meal I’d have the next four days, reminding me that no matter how good a meal I might be having, it was no Elkano.