Get Your Fresh Hot Gonads!

The following things are hereby crossed off my list of things to do:Write Science Fiction NovelOvercome Fear of ButterfliesEat Sea Urchin GonadsYes, dear readers, I ate sea urchin gonads. But that's not all I ate this weekend. In addition to that particular culinary treat, I also ate:claysilvercaramelized lactosea thawinglamb's trottersWhy? I am only beginning to be able to answer that question. So let's back up just a bit. Let's back up to approximately one month ago.Woofy and I have slight workaholic tendencies and it's usually around the time one of us is curled up in a ball on the floor, pulling at our hair and moaning incoherently that we realize it's time for a vacation. So we joined our pals, GastroChick and Damien for a weekend in the Culinary Adventure Capital known as San Sebastian, Spain. San Sebastian is where Europe's finest chefs go to be inspired.As luck would have it, it was Carnival. So in addition to gorging ourselves on food that was at times weird, at times wonderful, and mostly both, we also got to see loads of Basque people dressed up as bears, fairies, toothpaste, lizards, and Pocahantas.For lunch the first day we ate tapas ("pintxos" in the native Basque language), drank wine, and generally strolled around the city. I once lived in Spain, so this was all quite lovely and familiar. Here's GastroChick's review of the proceedings.That night things grew lovelier as we enjoyed the tasting menu at Arzak, which has three Michelin stars. I've never had a dining experience quite like it, though I am sorry to say memory of the evening is fading because of what was soon to follow. For the curious, GastroChick promises to review Arzak shortly.Curioser and curioser the weekend grew as the citizens of San Sebastian prepared for Carnival, which, for some reason, is in honor of Hungarian Gypsies, and my fellow culinary adventurers and I prepared to be wowed by Mugaritz. GastroChick promises a proper review of the Michelin-one-star, so check back with her. What I have to offer is my own impressions of a meal that I'm pretty sure will stay with me for a long time (if for no other reason than the fact that it might not be possible to digest clay).The decor of Mugaritz was straight out of The Blair Witch Project. From the cryptic symbols painted on the walls, to the rustic fork hanging from a piece of twine and surrounded by stones in the middle of the table, the place was designed to intimidate. And the food over the twelve or so courses grew increasingly alien and alienating. The gonads were among the least challenging. A bit more challenging was the aforementioned clay, which, not surprisingly, had a claggy sort of feel in the mouth. The charcoal vegetables were just that: vegetables burned into coal.I was game for about the first eight courses, but when the foie gras was served, my brain locked. Admittedly, I was still somewhat new to foie gras, but I'd liked it the two other times I'd had it. This was a completely different experience. For one thing it looked like something you'd transport in a freezer on an emergency helicopter to a sick child awaiting a life-saving transplant. The texture was spongy and it lacked all of the buttery lusciousness I associate with foie gras. I wanted to eat it anyway, because that's what this experience was all about. I mean it's all well and good for food to be delicious. This was supposed to be something more. We went to Mugaritz to be challenged, threatened even by its renowned chef, Andoni Aduriz. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, but at that moment, after the first bite of goose liver, my brain slammed shut. The chef had bested me. To my great embarrassment, I left the rest of the dish untouched.Next on the menu was the lamb's trotter. Vowing to stand firm against the onslaught of culinary artillery, I cut through the weird little thing, pulled at the unidentifiable sinewy tissue until it snapped then shoved it in my mouth, closed my eyes, and pretended it was steak. To my great surprise, it was only moderately awful. But when my dining companion, Damien, dropped his fork and threw in the towel, I knew it was safe to follow suit. Woofy, who has never met a food he wouldn't try, gamely ate half of his and GastroChick ate the entire thing, whether out of pleasure or chutzpah I do not know.Dessert was weird but not traumatizing, featuring as it did, "a thawing," (fancy term for a snow ball infused with orange blossom), some unsweetened pistachios, and something almost like ice cream.Because it was Carnival, we were unable to arrange a taxi to pick us up and drive us the ten miles back to the hotel, so our sommelier, Ruth, drove us. Ruth and the rest of the waitstaff were an amicable counterpoint to the weird and austere proceedings. I doubt I will return to Mugaritz as the requisite sense of advanture rests on a degree of ignorance I no longer have. But I am grateful for the experience. And though I do not believe Chef Andoni Aduriz produces much food that in itself is worth eating, I suspect that many of his wild experiments will ripple through the culinary landscape in wonderful ways. In fact, I expect to see "a thawing" on desert menus very soon. Lamb's trotters? Not so much.