Feeling Over Flavor
Talent makes the best restaurants in the world what they are, but to me, the company is what’s most memorable.

Everyone has their own type of mecca. Maybe it’s the actual city of Mecca, could be visiting Jerusalem, or walking El Camino de Santiago in Spain. Of all the different “meccas” one could treasure or dream of going to, the food world maybe offers the widest range of choices. Between amateurs and professional eaters alike, the original Shake Shack in Madison Square Park could be as much of a food mecca for someone as El Celler de Can Roca or Sukiyabashi Jiro could be for others, depending on who you ask. Regardless of your food knowledge, most people can choose a favorite restaurant, but if you ask someone like Eric Ripert what the food world’s mecca is, could he answer? His late friend Anthony Bourdain might have gotten close. When asked in 2011 by the New York Times where he would like to not just have his last meal, but die, Bourdain actually did have a simple answer: Etxebarri. 

I think I knew who Danny Meyer and Ina Garten were before I knew the names of any U.S. President, maybe excluding George Washington. Maybe. My first food memories are: eating a Wendy’s burger with a chocolate Frosty in Puerto Rico’s long gone Condado location and, separately, dunking a butter knife into a jar of paté–unfazed by the yellow, jelly-like fat at the top–spreading my scoop on a Carr’s table cracker, and enjoying it as if it were chocolate, again and again and again at a family Christmas party in our old Miramar apartment. I think I was maybe six. 

For as long as I can remember, rather than beginning dinners with my tight-knit family of four with, I don’t know, saying grace or a reflection of the day, we would immediately contemplate what our next meal would be before our stainless steel forks clinked on our eggplant hued, Sasaki ceramic plates. Out of the thousands of meals we’ve enjoyed together, be it in our Puerto Rico home, New York City or abroad, the joke about always planning the next meal before starting the current one must have been uttered by either my dad, my mom or my younger brother for nine in ten meals the past two decades.

If you put two and two together, it inevitably leads us to my family and I’s experience at Etxebarri in San Sebastián, food mecca, or one of many, if you will, June of 2019. My parents had visited the Basque city a few times before and I quite frankly feel bad for anything in San Sebastián not related to food, all they recounted were the pintxos, Arzak, Elkano and the Jim-Lit-Foxtrot gin tonic at the Hotel María Cristina. And of course, Etxebarri. I’d heard the three names so much they rang like a nursery rhyme in my head, “Arzak, Elkano, Etxebarri.”

It’s about an hour drive from the María Cristina to remote Etxebarri, and we were ready to go an hour and a half before our reservation. My parents were determined not to get lost through the Basque mountains, which they had when they went the year prior and eight years before that. We got lost, but to my parents’ satisfaction, the first picture I have of the wooden front door of the rustic yet elegant restaurant is stamped 1:00pm. 

Rather than “you had me at hello,” to Etxebarri I have to say, “you had me at the butter.” See, my dad and I have always been particular–or rather needed a lot of–two things, butter and salt. And see, Etxebarri is the kind of place that has its own goats, milked everyday to produce the cheesiest and most smoky spreadable concoction I’d ever had, and this was just… the bread and butter. The moment the waiter set down the alabaster white slab topped with black sea salt, my eyes went directly from the butter to my dad, who was already expecting my gaze, and we were off to the races. 

You know what they say about momentous events in your life, “it all happened so fast!” By 1:13pm we had in front of us toasts with fatty, glistening chorizo slices, next to fresh, equally glistening sardines atop halved cucumber spears. By 1:46pm it was bright red, suckling gambas, 2:10pm a smoky, tender squid. By 4pm, we’re still eating, but I’m out of pictures. Looking back at them, that's what my meal at Etxebarri feels like to me, ceremonious and well-paced, as many Michelin-starred restaurants tend to be, but honestly, kind of a blur. This isn’t to say this wasn't one of the best meals of my life, but two years later, I most remember feeling over flavor. 

I remember the anticipation and borderline giddiness making our way there, because I know the happiest moments of my life have been eating with my family. I remember my cheeks hurting from laughing so much on the way back, creating inside jokes and naturally, thinking of which pintxos spots we were going to that night, even after a four hour meal. My next photos are actually, a Jim-Lit-Foxtrot at 8:31pm, a myriad of pintxos at 9:53pm, and two slices of La Viña Basque cheesecake at 11:14pm. 

Two things are clear. One, my family can eat... a lot. Two, though I’m lucky we love to eat, and have visited some of the best restaurants in the world, my attachment to and passion for food comes from a place of love, for the food of course, but mostly from love for my family and time spent with them (eating).