Arzak, with three Michelin stars, sits at number 8 in the The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards for 2011 (up 1 from 2010) and is Spain’s third best restaurant behind the number two Mugaritz which we visited last night. I’d read a little bit about Arzak and to say that it was going to be different from our Mugaritz experience was putting it mildly. Where Mugaritz was about the simple flavours and simple styling, Arzak is all about bringing exciting and fantastic creations to the table – and I was very happy not to be disappointed tonight!

Arzak as a restaurant appeared a lot smaller than Mugaritz. Being located nearer to the city centre I guess it didn’t have the sprawling green space at its disposal. There was a front room and two dining rooms that we could see. We were directed to the upper floor dining room which was quite cosy and we felt like we were nearly sitting on top of our fellow diners! Just kidding … but we were quite close. On the plus side we could see the food being delivered to other tables and had a chance to re-hear some of the descriptions. 🙂

I was pleased that once seated they didn’t make us wait too long before bringing out the first offerings. I’m not really sure why sometimes some restaurants insist on you waiting an age before bringing food out! The quartet of amuse delivered to our table were very visual and pretty to behold, and tasted pretty darn good too.

Serrano Ham and Tomato surrounded by a cloud of Mint Smoke (a twist on sweet and sour); Marinated Anchovy and Strawberry with tangy cream sauce presented on a light box (surprisingly worked well and again a play on the sweet and sour balance); Yellow Crispy Rice with Mushroom (a good savoury mouthful); Kabraroka (Scorpion fish) Pudding with Kataifi (like hair prawns).

These were then chased down by a gorgeous Corn Soup with Fig and Black Pudding. Two favourite ingredients out of three wasn’t bad! For something so tiny it had great and complex flavouring. The black pudding added that extra bit of interest to the dish. The fact we were given these giant long spoons to eat/drink with was rather entertaining.

Having been stunned by these amuse bouche we were really looking forward to seeing what the Degustation menu had in store for us. We sure weren’t disappointed.

When the Cromlech Y Cebolla Con Te Y Café (Cromlech and Onion with Tea and Coffee) arrived on the table we didn’t really know what to think! Cromlech is commonly used to refer to stone circles so this was the outer shell. I think our waitress said it was made with manioc. Inside the delicate shell was silken foie gras (okay it looks better than the picture seems.) It was so melt in your mouth. The tea and coffee flavour was subtle.

Onion made an appearance again in our second dish – this time as the feature ingredient in the Bogavante Coralino (Lobster Reef.) What a bright colourful dish! Generous bite-size portions bathed in a tomato-type sauce sitting on perfectly sweet oinions. The sesame brittle added a good crunch and who doesn’t love toasted sesame seeds. This dish was accompanied by a tapioca salad which I didn’t think really added much to the dish. I’m not used to my meals like this having extra side dishes!

Playing with our minds a bit was the Mejillon Y Huevo Espolvoreado (Mussels and Dusted Egg) which followed. Smartly turning the mussel into the egg “yolk” this kind of was a bit of a trippy dish – only because I was expecting to bite into an egg and found mussel instead. I loved the herby crispy stuff on top without which the dish would have been too eggy.

Rape Marea Baja (Low tide Monkfish) was visually the cutest dish I’ve ever seen. Incredibly colourful (yes I know it can only be food die but still …) Let’s dissect this one ingredient by ingredient. The monkfish was beautiful (you can normally hardly go wrong), the mussel gel cells were cute but didn’t have much flavour, the Seaweed in tempura were slightly too hard to eat but I did like the sugar cells which were little candied treats. Did it all work together? I’m not sure. Visually it was a definite highlight and I’m sure we took more photos of this dish than any other and the monkfish was perfectly cooked, but the bits and pieces were more nice to look at than to eat. Interestingly we got an extra bowl with more shells, seaweed and stars too.

For our meat finale, there was a divergence on the next dish for Su Yin and I. Where she went for the Cordero Con Romero Y Curcuma (Lamb with Rosemary and Tumeric) which was accompanied with a side of tempura vegetable in black sesame.

I went for the Pichon Asado Con Maiz Y Flor De Azahar (Grilled Pigeon with Corn and Orange Blossom) The pigeon had a gorgeous charred flavour and was juicy without too much of the typical gaminess. It came served with an extremely fragrant peach sauce and accompanied by a salad with crispy rice, black sesame seeds and bacon and an extra pigeon leg!

Desserts were as equally visually stunning as our main dishes had been. Su Yin’s Sopa Y Chocolate “entre Vinedos” (Soup and Chocolate “among the vineyards”) was just so interesting. A strawberry soup which came with a scoop of rosemary sorbet and chocolate sorbet (served in a separate bowl) and the purple bubbles (which looked like grapes) contained warm molten chocolate inside.

I had opted for the non-chocolate dish and ended up with the Piedra De Pistacho Y Remolacha (Stone Pistachio and Beetroot.) This totally threw me for a loop. I really loved it. Served with a scoop of ice cream (can’t remember the flavour) it all combined very well.

Su Yin’s next dessert, Hidromiel Y Fractal Fluido (Mead Fluid and Fractal) came in two parts. This white plate was placed on the table containing a pool of clear, it turns out, honey syrup. In the mean time she had delivered to Su Yin what we think was white chocolate covering lemon curd. My bro would have loved this. The waitress then dropped a touch of red food colouring into the honey syrup which produced this stunning design. We didn’t know what to do with the dish as the waitress left at this point but then came back to pour it over Su Yin’s dish. It was only because we were busy taking photos that Su Yin was able to enjoy the dish as it was mean to be. We saw other tables starting to dig into the dish before the waitress poured the fractal liquid over. This was also served with apple ice cream.

My finale was the Dulce Lunatico (Lunatic Sweet) which were some sort of orange and passion fruit liquid encased in some sort of hard shell which I think was prepped using liquid nitrogen to keep the liquid inside but have the hard outer shell. There were also drops of reduced red win and sesame sugar. Served with banana ice cream. I quite enjoyed this dish – refreshing.

The petit fours – dark and white chocolate nuts and bolts, popping candy in cola jelly bottle caps, mango jelly lego pieces, white beans with red tea – really said it all about Arzak – unusual, a bit of wow factor, attention to detail, and trying to pack in a lot into small packages.

From a service perspective we couldn’t have asked for more. Our waitress was extremely efficient, spoke English well and was happy to banter with us. An example of her professionalism – when she came to serve us a dish and accidentally tipped part it over she immediately took it away to re-plate it, oh, and when Su Yin made a mess of our table she quickly ran over to place a serviette over the mess! Loved her. Note another table had a different waitress who pretty much just did the bare minimum (from the conversation we could hear) but I would put that down to the fact that she didn’t seem to speak English that well. We hadn’t realised it but the daughter of the father/daughter team, Elena Arzak, had been downstairs when we were busy taking photos of the outside. Both Juan, her father, and Elena came out to the restaurant at various times to speak individually to the diners and she said to us “I remember you from downstairs.” How nice. Juan’s conversation with us revolved around his brother in spirit Sydney’s Tetsuya Wakuda (owner of arguably Australia’s top restaurant), when he found out we were from Oz. All the waiters actually make a point of asking you where you from and oddly the one waiter asked us twice if we were in the food industry. As an added touch you are also given a personalised menu at the end of dinner. The one neg was the fact that our aperitifs of peach juice were charged at 8 euro a bottle! They weren’t even cocktails – we saw the waitress pour them from the bottles themselves and I swear you can buy them for about 80p here … that’s some mark-up.

I don’t want to end on a negative as Arzak was a great experience. We had an absolutely enjoyable time at Arzak and on comparison would say that I preferred it over our experience at Mugaritz but that is purely down, I think, to the excitement factor. Each dish was innovative and visually stunning and for the most part the flavours worked well together. Granted because there was such a focus on presentation that maybe sometimes dishes got over complicated but you can’t say that we didn’t say “wow” every time a new dish hit our table. For comparative purposes, the tasting menu was 175 euro.