Do fish have chins?

Apparently so! On Saturday night we ventured out to a Michelin starred restaurant in Bilbao. It was an interesting evening – mainly due to the 9-course tasting menu which took us to places in our palates that we didn’t know existed. And not always in a good way. We were welcomed by a trainee chef who explained a little about the history of the restaurant. We had a couple of pre-tasting tasters, one of which was a quail’s egg that had been deep fried in batter – a sort of tempura egg. It was delicious. We were led to our table, which seemed to be the best in the room. It was a white walled room, with white table linen, and a white single stem flower in a vase. Nothing else on the table.  No cutlery, no side plate, no napkin. At first, it seemed like they were maybe in the middle of refurbishing the place…Then a brown leather gloved hand appeared and put two pieces of bread on a linen square in front of each of us. The bread was nice, but we didn’t really get the brown leather glove…

First course with first wine appeared which was tomatoes done four ways – big shame for Ally who really doesn’t like tomatoes. Second course was a lovely paper thin sliver of avocado with some green leaves, green emulsion and parmesan shavings (later on this received our second highest votes). Third course and second wine was anchovies on mashed potato (voted our favourite dish). Fourth course and third wine was foie gras in a sauce – a little too underdone for me (if that’s possible). Then the fifth course –  the waiter had been explaining very carefully what we were eating but this time, once the plates had been placed on the table, he said the immortal words, “This is the chin of the cod”. I really started to doubt that we were being served something that really existed. However, we all nodded and said “great” before tucking in. It seemed we all had the same thought at the same time – ‘chin of cod’ got us scratching, well, our chins. We tried hard to picture where a chin would be on a cod. Then we started laughing and couldn’t stop. It was one of those moments when I realised I was laughing hysterically in a restaurant where laughing might not be part of the ambience. Clearly when you shouldn’t be laughing, it just makes things worse. Course six, seven, eight and nine with fourth and fifth wine (you get the gist), ended up being a blur which included grey foam, grey ice-cream, white and cream emulsion with some hard pieces of fruit. We  also started playing a game after each course: “Can we remember what we have eaten!” Sadly, we got muddled but maybe it was the wines (all white wines and, one time, when I looked at Ally’s glasses all lined up, I did think they looked like something that might be handed in for tests at a hospital). At one point, the plates had been cleared and none of us could name anything that we had just eaten.  So, for the fabulous company, I would award my fellow diners at least five stars.

I must also mention that in the loos, they provided a toothbrush and toothpaste. We weren’t sure why, unless we were meant to clean our teeth after each course…. any other suggestions would be welcome! See one of the pudding courses below – quinoa ice-cream, carrot and chocolate chip cookie…I think the chocolate chip cookie must have been eaten by the waiter before it got to the table…..