My wife and I just completed what amounted to an unplanned overkill of three high end restaurants in 5 days( one of the three was planned, the other was a maybe, the last one was totally last minute).
I was going to hold off writing a review until we had done all three, but the Mugaritz experience was so visceral in the aftermath that I had to write something.
Today we finished Elkano and the experience was similarly interesting, hence another post dinner right up.
Try as might, we couldn't help but come off a dinner with Mugaritz and not inevitably compare it against Elkano. Which is funny to say because if ever there was a restaurant that was the opposite of Mugaritz, it would be Elkano. Good or bad, the food style they are going for is heavily seafood based, all of it local(and this cannot be emphasized enough, local here means stuff they get from within half a mile from their restaurant). As such, it's a lot of fish dishes with minimal garnishes and very minimal accompaniments. Its basically very much boiling down to the fish is the star, let it sing! You can kind of see that with the pictures I've attached. A plate of absolutely fresh fish and minimal additions.
I wrote in my Mugaritz post that with a lot of these San Pellegrino top 100s, there are usually one or two unforgettable dishes, at least a half a dozen very good dishes, some ok to solid dishes, and then maybe a clunker or two at the most. This had no clunkers, but also no unforgettable ones. That's mostly coming down to the fact that it's so minimalist in it's approach.
Once again, every person has their own preferences when it comes to food. After a night filled with too many clunkers, it was welcome to get well prepared dishes that made sense. However, two issues were constantly nagging me.
1) the dishes felt a hair under seasoned and lacked a bit of acicidty. Even a bit of smoke from the grill would have been a treat.
2) while Mugaritz went hog wild trying to be different, this was a little too restrained. We've gone to places that have done conventional cooking but at least a nice garnish or sauce adds just enough complexity to elevate. That said, it may just be a personal preference.
Our favorite bite was a simpler mushroom dish of chanterelles and porcinis.
The rest were all of the solid or good. The whole turbot was cooked well. Ditto for the lobster. But I just wished there was something more.
Again, maybe this is a bias coming from someone who started their culinary journey in the US. Places like Fl or Single Thread don't necessarily go full crazy like Mugaritz, but their food still follows a fun interplay of flavors and textures. That said, We've also been to Mirazur, Lido 84, and Torre Del Sarancino all of those places served up fascinating bites that were impeccably well prepared and showed off a ton of range. Lido 84 had the wackiest non-molecular cuisine we'd ever had and it was still fucking awesome.
To that end, after a post largely bashing Mugaritz, the two best dishes between both restaurants belonged to Mugaritz, which were the beef cheek dish and the okra caviar dish. Both were truly shock in your face great and unexpected. However, while Elkano served 0 bad dishes, Mugaritz served at least 5 that were just stuff I wouldn't even take a second or third bite from. Ultimately, I'm left kind of disappointed by both in totally different ways.
Fortunately, Enigma was fucking ridiculously awesome and I will post nothing but good things to say in a follow up.
by Think-Culture-4740