Akelaré – a review

Akelare-tunaOn our second day in the Basque region, we hopped in the car and drove towards San Sebastian, stopping on the way for another indulgent meal at the three Michelin star Akelaré.  Perching high on the cliff tops, Akelaré is built to look like a boat and as such is light, spacious and has spectacular views out over the sea.  

I was wondering how I would fit another meal in after our meal at Azurmendi the night before but once the bread basket was waved under my nose, I knew I would somehow find space for our second tranche of gourmet fare.

Due to a slight oversight on the camera battery front, I’m afraid the post only covers the more food pic friendly dishes of our meal (apologies for the blog fail!)

Our meal started with an incredibly inventive dish known as the ‘Sea Garden’…

Akelare-seaThis beautiful little scene of food was made up of prawn’s sand, oyster leaf, mussel with ‘shell’, sea urchin’s sponge, beach pebbles made from shallot and corn and codium seaweed coral (or goose barnacles tempura). This was not only a work of art, but also tasted like a dream.

The fish dishes here were delicious but didn’t completely wow me; but then they had tough competition given at the time I had recently returned from Japan. That aside, the stand out fish dish for me was the Hake and its kokotxa with oyster leaf and ‘mussel’s beans’, the flaky sweet fish was matched perfectly with the mollusc flavoured sides.  

The meat dish however was a complete taste sensation…pigeon with a touch of mole and cocoa. 

Akelare-pigeonI was intrigued to try another pigeon dish to compare to the one the night before at Azurmendi and I think that this actually topped the one there…the sweet taste of the chocolate worked really well with the strong game-y flavour of the medium rare pigeon.

The boy had the roasted suckling pig with tomato ‘bolao’ and iberian emulsion…pork is not my kind of meat but I was assured it was delicious and the crackling alone made it pap worthy!

Akelare-porkThe peeling off peaches blew my mind…looks like a peach, smells like a peach but no! And to top off the trickery the almond ice-cream inside the ‘peaches’ was a taste-sensation – light, flavoursome and refreshing.

Akelare-peachThe ‘different’ apple tart with the edible paper, light pastry and indulgent creamy filling was a decadent way to round off the meal.  This dish was perfectly matched with an absolutely delicious ice cider from Malus Mama which provided just the right level of sweetness but also managed to cut through the rich cream.

Akelare-apple-pie Compared to Azurmendi, Akelare fell down on service but the head chef Pedro Subijana’s beautiful and inventive menu could barely be faulted.

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