Happy Noms

Author: Victor
Exec Chef: Martin Berasategui
Website: http://www.martinberasategui.com/en/inicio

November 2, 2013

For my third day in San Sebastián, I planned to eat lunch at Restaurante Martin Berasategui (“MB”) and then dinner at Arzak. MB is a short 10- to 15-minute taxi ride away from San Sebastián, and it’s located in Lasarte-Oria.

The restaurant’s small and intimate, and it also feels a lot classier (and more formal) than Mugaritz and Arzak. Everything about this restaurant screams fine dining. Waiters are pretty formal, the restaurant is relatively quiet and calm, and customers are dressed nicely. The waiters all walk around in jackets, they all have great posture, and most were pretty stiff. I kind of wish the service was warmer—by contrast, the people at Mugaritz seemed a lot happier and more genuinely friendly, while those at Arzak seemed more genuinely interested in serving you.

In contrast to the wait staff, Chef Berasategui seemed incredibly friendly and jovial. He’s in the restaurant a lot, and he apparently tries to stop by every table and say hi. Unfortunately, he couldn’t speak English (more important, I can’t speak Spanish haha), so I couldn’t really talk to him. Oh well!

Oh, and one last thing—my pictures kind of suck because of the weird lighting. It was really cloudy today, and each table also had a light above it that created some weird lighting in my pictures.

Click here to see pictures of the food!