SAN SEBASTIAN

APRIL, 2017

One of the places I most love in the world and where I spend my first year in a professional kitchen about 12 years ago, San Sebastian still gets under my skin.

The small city with a density of incomparable gastronomic level and where you have to have a very bad day to have a bad meal, is as beautiful as ever as we arrive in full sunshine to restaurant Amelia where I will cook with Michelin-starred Argentinian chef Paulo Airado.

We are welcomed in his newly opened restaurant by a lovely team and are in good Latin/Basque style immediately offered lunch! Great clean flavours and seasonal products cooked to perfection with a glass of wonderful Italian wine is my favourite way to discuss mise en place.

Photograph by Kaimila Seilder

We leave Amelia to get ready for a very special dinner- Mugaritz, which just opened for the season, are expecting us.

This is the restaurant where I first understood the difference between doing things and doing things right. A constant search for pushing boundaries with a very emotional approach to creating a dinner experience that makes you reflect and forces you to have an opinion. I’m more in love with this restaurant than ever. It’s also here I learned Spanish and the first time I moved away from Denmark at 21-years old.

After years of hard work at Gustu, our very own Bolivian Kenzo Hirose got one of the very after sought spaces at Mugaritz this year and it was very emotional and incredible to see him in the brown apron. All the best of luck Kenzo!

We get started on prep for our four hands dinner and the team at Amelia is amazing- a dedicated young team of super professional men and women. I love this restaurant and I have only been here one day! There is a special feeling in a newly opened place where everybody is rowing in the same direction and the hopes and dreams are grand. We have several visits from colleagues from surrounding restaurants and it must be a good feeling for the team to feel welcome to the city. We finish service and the team has an unseen appetite for Fernet Branca and Coca-Cola, could be because most are from Argentina? 🙂

Paulo shows me some of his local providers and we collect beach herbs in the morning before heading to the Basque Culinary Center where i give a lecture on a little bit of everything – Our work in Bolivia, the Melting Pot Foundation, my expedition and my views on our responsibilities as cooks. Great students with many interesting questions and a bit of classic Bolivian cuisine; Tongue in spicy ají sauce. Thanks Luis Arrufat for helping out!

Last service in San Sebastian, leaving a little piece of my heart with the unique team at Amelia..

Tomorrow we head to Madrid for the final destination on round 1.