#mystery spot : Basque Country, Spain

As much as I love to share my favorite discoveries around here, some places are just too good to share. Too good to offer them up to the click of the mouse, where it’s not the earnest food lovers that just want a good meal while stopping through that worry me but anyone who will go and gleefully spread the word to thousands of people. To that end, I am recovering the #mystery posts that I have put up in the past when confronted with a place I simply find too good to share.

This is a spot I heard about from a friend, just another asador of many outside of San Sebastián. Or is it?

By this time, I’ve been on several occasions and it is so much more than just another restaurant with a grill. You would never find this place without making a bee line straight to it. Even making it to the village where it’s located would be practically impossible without trying—and the entrance is hidden on a back street, totally and utterly charmless.

If you did, however, make it into the restaurant, you would quickly find a few clues that you were somewhere special. Squishy goose barnacles, sold by the kilo and perfectly plump and juicy, squirt everywhere in one of the few acceptable ways to be ultra messy in a nice restaurant. Another clue would be the wine list, which isn’t especially long, but I love the casual, handwritten addition they’ve thrown on there for good measure.

If you are wise, you will order a plate of delicate kokotxas. Kokotxas are a delicacy, meant to be enjoyed singularly and mindfully, not by the dozen. When we slipped these onto our tongues, they dissolved, the gelatin perfumed with smoke from the grill.

Fresh porcini, seared and dotted with shiny, salt-flecked egg yolk.

This is what the kid’s menu looks like in fabulous mystery restaurants around here:

And the crowning glory? The grilled fish in general, and the sea bream in particular. I have never had one with meat so tender and flavorful. I secretly resent many grilled fishes for being bland, and even good ones can leave me indifferent, but this one is succulently perfect.

A good cheese ice cream and we went home fat and happy.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not sharing all the details of this mystery. Can we agree to just celebrate that these kinds of places are a thing, off maps and humbly existing?