Lunch at Elkano (and A Brief Lesson in Txakoli)

While jaunting around the Basque coast, Christina and I were lucky enough to score a table for lunch at Elkano in Getaria (thanks to Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia!) This is a spot loved by many for their extremely fresh fish dishes grilled over charcoal, as is typical in the Basque region.

To get to the front door of the restaurant you have to walk right by the charcoal grills and a generous helping of smoke clouds. There’s really nothing quite like getting a sneak peek- and whiff- of your future meal to get the appetite going and mouth watering. Smart thinking there, Elkano. Props.

This sweet looking chap was manning the grill and a dozen or so hake collars (we would be eating these soon enough.)

And this impressive turbot dude was chillin’ and grillin’. We would’ve loved to have eaten this, but it was mad expensive for our vacation depleted pockets.

So, we made it to our seats and got down to business. First up: the wine! Of course. The general manager of the restaurant kindly poured us 4 different Txakoli to try.

Let’s talk Txakoli for a moment, shall we?

01/ It’s the name of the wine, not the grapes. And it is pronounced chock-oh-lee. The grapes are, usually: hondarrabi zuri (white grape) and hondarrabi beltza (red grape) and the literally mean the white and black of Hondaribbia, respectively. You can also find folle blanche, gros and petit manseng, courbu and a funny light red grape called oilar begi (chicken eye).

02/ there are 3 main regions producing Txakoli: Getariako Txakolina (Txakoli from Getaria), Bizkaiko Txakolina (from Biscay) and Arabako Txakolina (from Alava).

03/ It’s pretty much always gonna be white wine and, in recent years, more producers are doing rosado as well. You might see a red from time to time, maybe.

SO. What wine did we get to drink? 4 completely different Txakoli all from the 2010 vintage, except for the Urki which was 2009. From the biggest winery in the area (Txomin Etxaniz) to the smallest 1,000 bottle producer (Adur, which has literally NO web presence).

I have to say that the Urki, which I was already familiar with, was the only wine I really wanted to drink the entire glass of. Not to say that any of the other wines weren’t good wines. Just not incredibly interesting in a “I can’t wait to take another sip!” kind of way. The Adur had a funky mineral thing going on and was quite a departure from any other Txakoli I’ve ever had. I did go back to the glass of  Txomin Etxaniz (the biggest winery in the area) several times mainly because it tasted more like a cheerful apple or pear cidre and went great with the caramelized leek and halibut we were eating.

Wanna see a menu in Spanish AND Basque? Here ya go!

Yeah. We asked for the English menu…

After ordering, the amuse bouche arrived and I must say this was SWOON WORTHY. Seriously, some of the best crudo that I have ever had. This was raw squid with some kind of tomato salsa. The way the squid was diced was key, resulting in a melt in your mouth buttery consistency.

The hake “neck”, as it was translated. We split this as our first course. It was prepared three ways- fried, butter poached and here in “green sauce.”

Halibut. SO simply prepared but delicious. All the food tasted like it was caught that morning. And some of it probably was!

Last but not least, the remains of our ooey gooey chocolate souffle bomb extravaganza.

As is evident, I was scraping every last bit of chocolate off my plate as if my life depended on it. I should’ve just picked it up and licked it off.

Before I go, I must bring up a hot topic from our trip. While in Rioja some winemakers told us that maybe some Txakoli producers buy grapes from Rioja to beef up their production. Considering their total number of planted hectares are far less than what could produce the amount of bottles they are rolling out every year. Has anyone else heard of this little scandal?

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