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Since I met her in charge of the Galerna kitchen, I have been a fan of Rebeca Barainka‘s cooking. A kitchen without ties, full of … daring, which is quite an experience in the mouth. Rebeca’s cuisine is a very personal cuisine, it is a faithful reflection of herself, a Castilian who cooks from memory, from the secrets and recipes that her mother and grandmother taught her, the family transmission, those roots and culture where she shows a way of understanding and living the land through a current cuisine. But, the territory also cooks. That welcome, the years that he has been among us, where he works towards food sovereignty from respect for the environment, the season and the proximity, a work that goes beyond showing a town, is to transmit a way of understanding cuisine, from the care and care of the product, to highlighting humble products. There and here, before and now, everything mixed in the shaker at the service of a gastronomic experience that does not leave you indifferent.
I visited her at the beginning of December and I felt her in top form, cooking with confidence, strengthening her idea and culinary proposal, an experience that seeks to make the customer happy through telling stories, embracing them through dishes that must be savored calmly in the search for nuances, strength, intensity of flavor, combinations and games of flavors that catch you and surprise you, with a proposal that is very much hers, a gastronomic storm. Creativity in full effervescence, the passion and love for cooking, for his craft, turned into a gift for our palate. Of course, he does not forget what Aiten Etxe has been all his life, a restaurant where fire and embers have been the protagonists, and the menu offers traditional dishes. A kitchen for all audiences.
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Address.
Zarautz Calle Elkano, 3 (Hotel Ur Bare) -
Telephone.
943831825 -
Dining room.
2 for 60 guests -
Precio.
Menu €65 / tasting menu. €120 -
Prices.
Fluid begihaundi and octopus croquettes €26.00 / Nuggets of Segovian suckling pig, Kimchi mayonnaise, lime and palo Cortado €32.00 / Octopus and Andean potatoes from Blasenea and mojo €29.00 / Sarda-Sarda with onions, original Northern tuna €35.00 / Blue duck cooked for 12 hours finished grilled with mole and corn €35.00
Rebeca Barainka landed at the Aiten Etxe Restaurant in August 2024. A historic house, an important name when it comes to telling the gastronomic history of Zarautz. In 2023 Laura Azpiroz and Juan Ramon Goikoetxea converted it into the Hotel Ur Bare, a 4-star boutique hotel with 13 rooms. Jokin Mena is the hotel manager. On the ground floor is the restaurant, where Giovanna Aratan acts as head of the room. She will welcome us and guide us through her proposal, with professionalism and closeness.
The current tasting menu is called Ekaitza, which evokes the storm of flavors, of bites that catch you, that become fireworks in your mouth. His first bite, partridge and acorn bonbon, a nod to his roots, a trip to his town, with the partridge, game cuisine, and the acorn, which they turn into flour, to create that bite that they then dip in chocolate, and which becomes an intense bite. The first pass, which takes you to the dessert or pre-dessert, the apple, but Rebeca, true to her style, decides to break with it and invite you to start her experience with a Granny Smith granita that is presented on a natural osmotized apple and a touch of the freshness of the freshly cut apple. A dish that meant eating it and thinking: this is Rebeca, capable of breaking your mold and leaving you speechless, all with a smile on her face.
A dish that unites Rebeca’s two lands, the one where she was born and the one that has seen her grow as a cook, the traditional La Mancha porridge, a cream that is accompanied with txangurro that they caress on the grill, that nod to our sea, and that finishes with a fennel emulsion, which takes us to the countryside of La Mancha. A trip, the elegance of the txangurro and the flavor of the porridge, wonderful.
Two dishes that are proof of the freedom and culinary mastery with which Rebeca cooks at Aiten Etxe. On the one hand, a sheep curry, a very crazy idea, which is pure flavor, seemed magical to me. They make the curry from sheep’s milk with different fruits and habanero chili, to finish enhancing and seeking depth in the bite, sardines from Cuba, that old sardine that is pure strength. A dish that is pure rock and roll. Finally, the hake, cooked to a perfect point, mastery and respect for the product, the delicacy and elegance of a fish so deeply rooted in our culinary culture, accompanied by a reduction of cauliflower and alleys, a sample of the chef’s commitment to paying attention to and cooking what the earth gives.
This was just part of the perfect gastronomic storm that I experienced during my visit to Aiten Etxe. I invite you to immerse yourself in this gastronomic tribute. Rebeca Barainka is in top shape, and, we are lucky to have her around, she is enjoying cooking and translates all of this into a proposal that will make you happy. On egin!
