It took an electrician to lift grilling into the upper echelon of fine cooking. Victor Arguinzoniz couldn’t find work in the field he was trained in, so he worked a stint as a lumberjack. When the local restaurant came up for rent, he discovered his true calling. With wood — and the near abandonment of electrical cooking — the large, friendly 51-year-old chef-restaurateur found the key to Etxebarri’s success.
Even once you make your way to Axpe, it is hard to find the restaurant, squeezed between a parking lot and a playground. There are no people around to ask. But the smell of burning wood gives the place away.
The food is simple, sometimes so much so that it makes you wonder: Is that it?
A single shrimp is a dish in itself. No sauce, and not even a lemon wedge. Is this possible? I exclaim in enjoyment and wonder after I bite into it. It is like eating pizza in Naples for the first time; something I think I know all too well is suddenly new. A single oyster is also served by itself, warm and creamy, kissed by smoke. Three clams come with one small piece of citrus each; lemon, orange and grapefruit. And then there are the baby octopuses, tender and perfectly cooked, served with a little of their own ink as a sauce.
There is very little new in the technique. Arguinzoniz’s custom-made grills with adjustable grates are impressive. But the only reason he has so many is so he can handle several different dishes for many guests during service.
The basic concept is simple and as old as cooking itself: Fire plus food equals deliciousness. There is not really much of the cooking at Etxebarri that could not have been conducted by our ancestors 40 or 1,000 years ago. Yet it seems revolutionary, like nothing else I have tasted.
The novelty is in the execution and the attention — not so much to detail as to the fundamental elements of grill cooking. When I spend time early in the day with Arguinzoniz, both in the kitchen and in the woodshed, it all starts with the selection of wood. He uses oak for most of his cooking, selecting different-size pieces of wood for different uses. Old, slow-burning oaks that have grown in the mountains are preferred for most foods. The exception is some of the red meats, for which he finds the intense heat from vines useful, and salmon, which he cooks over citrus wood.
The day I visit, it is an all-oak day. The wood is burned in baking ovens to ensure clean, evenly burning embers, then moved to the grills when needed. The first thing that strikes me is how few burning embers he uses.
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