L’Antre : Bidart, France

What do you get when you combine France, a restaurant, and an Australian guy that is not just obsessive about cooking, but about sourcing and crafting every single ingredient in his kitchen?

You get one of the most exciting restaurants in the Southwest of France, which we are lucky enough to have right on our front door: L’Antre, in Bidart.

I’m happy to bring you an update that any of you fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood this year will greatly profit from. This post has been in the draft section for way too long, as it involves one of the best local restaurant experiences I have had in a while.

Chef Luke Dolphin and his wife Laetitia are at the helm of this small yet surprising bistro in between Biarritz and San Sebastián. Dolphin is the kind of chef I love—the one that spends free time grabbing greens from the nearby hills to brew something up, fermenting his own vinegars because it matters, and making his own cheese so he can make sure it never has to suffer, shivering in a walk-in cooler somewhere. L’Antre is that kind of restaurant, one in which every single ingredient is thought of—a lot. And, equally importantly, the ingredients come together to make a dish you actually enjoy eating.

L’Antre has a mid-priced menu, but the best way to go if you plan on dining is to order their “Freestyle” Tasting menu, an 8-course riff on what’s fresh and what Luke feels like cooking. It gives you a taste of an amazing variety of techniques, ingredients, and flavors.

That’s what I did when I visited. We started with a housemade snack board: charcuterie, pickles, butter and bread, all made from scratch.

Each of the tasting dishes was just the right size. It was very Chez Panisse at moments, like this tomato dish that was the very essence of summer ripeness, on the plate and served with its tomato water.

The cooking has a French sensibility and delicateness to it, but the flavors and inspiration come from around the world. This raw fish dish was dressed with fresh cucumber juice and a black sauce, made from dehydrated and burnt cucumber seasoned with homemade vinegar. The green is sea fennel from nearby secluded cliffs and green juniper Dolphin picked from the Pyrenees.

This dish had me at hello…instead of the heavy-handed (albeit delicious) plop-a-yolk-on-some-mushrooms method we have over here in Spain, Dolphin served his porcini with a hand-whipped sabayon egg sauce. He substituted the alcohol in the process with fermented porcini juice, made from excess trimmings. In case that didn’t require enough work, it’s got a subtly flavored wild green garlic butter dotted around.

This dish, though you can’t see it, was beef tongue, cooked slowly with local cider and garlic, served with caramelized onions, pangrattato and chives.

One of my favorite dishes was the ricotta, made fresh daily. At L’Antre, it is served according to the daily inspiration, and I was able to enjoy it with dried black olives, basil, mini tomato and house-salted and air-dried albacore tuna.

When it came time for the proteins, the first dish was line-caught hake. Dolphin reduces a hake stock and seasons with a chili oil, which he makes from scratch out of Espelette peppers he has bought fresh and dried himself to grind into powder. This house-made oil is sort of a tipping of the hat to the similar Basque condiment, xipister. The hake was served with roasted eggplant, 2-year fermented green tomato, and a sea spinach Dolphin forages in the summer.

I know. This guy is the real deal, right?

Finally, the last savory dish came in the form of veal sweetbread,, dusted in a local grand roux corn flour and seasoned with local Szechuan before grilling. Fermented radish and salted, macerated cucumber on the side for a light, crunchy counterpoint.

Dessert was light but lovely: a meringue with a fennel cap, used to top a strawberry sorbet, which (in case you didn’t get it yet), is made with fresh local strawberries.

I’m really hard-pressed to think of any restaurant around here, even the big guns here in San Sebastián, that is so committed to product and to doing it right.

If you’ve made it this far in the post, I know you’re sold. Make your reservations here:

L’Antre

6 Avenue de la Grande Plage
64210 Bidart, France
+33 5 59 47 78 92
Open for dinner, Tuesday through Sunday
www.instagram.com/lantre.bidart