A Family That Cooks Together: One-on-One with Elena Arzak

Elena Arzak is one of the world’s best chefs (literally). She runs a three-star Michelin restaurant, has won countless awards, and is redefining Basque cuisine with her innovative recipes. Earlier this year, Arzak’s family restaurant, Arzak, where she works with her father, was named one of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, coming in at number 8 on the hot list. Arzak was one of only two women who made the list and the only one in the top ten. And though to the restaurant world that may be worth noting, to Arzak, it is not.

“I am from San Sebastián, in the Basque country, which is a matriarchal society, women in the kitchen is normal,” Arzak said. “My grandmother was a chef and my mother works in the restaurant and 80 percent of the staff in Arzak are women.”

This isn’t the first time Arzak has made headlines. In 2012, she won the Veuve Clicquot award for World’s Best Female Chef. She saw this not as a personal achievement, but as an industry-wide one. “I see it as an award to my profession,” Arzak said. “It’s a social question. Before, the woman’s job was at home. Little by little, that has been changing. It’s a question of time: when I went to culinary school 25 years ago, it was mostly men. Today, it is equal.”

Arzak is the fourth generation of chefs in her family: she works side-by-side with her father Juan Mari Arzak, who helped to revolutionize Basque cuisine and is considered the father of the Basque Country’s nueva cocina, a culinary movement that has modernized Basque cooking the same way way Ferran Adria revolutionized Spanish cuisine.

“The story of the restaurant is,” Juan Mari explains, “as far back as I can remember, the story of my family. The house was built in 1897 by my grandparents José María Arzak Etxabe and Escolástica Lete, as a wine cellar and tavern At Alto de Miracruz, in the village of Alza, now part of San Sebastian. Many of my earliest childhood memories took place there.“

Juan Mari started working at the restaurant in 1966 with his mother as teacher, training him in the “secrets of gastronomy."”

“Curiosity and a desire to continue learning pushed me to work on dishes of my own creation,“ Juan Mari said. And it seems Juan Mari did the same for Elena. Though they are adamant that Juan Mari leads the kitchen at Arzak, without Elena, the cuisine they create would not be possible.

“My father is a very positive person,” Elena said. “He says that in order to create you need to think like a child. That is why we make a good team. He is more childish than I am. I am, perhaps, more practical. But we are both sentimental people.”

Next, a look at cooking at Arzak… [pagebreak]

They call their food research-based, multi-sensory, disciplinary cuisine and they don’t start out in the kitchen.

“We have a test kitchen and lab,” Elena said. “I work in tandem with my father there with two chefs to develop new ideas. “ A dish like avocado ice cream will go through five test versions before a decision is made on which direction to take.  “We never stop creating a plate,” Elena said.

And though their cuisine can sometimes be described as experimental, it’s firmly planted in Basque tradition.

“Traditions are the base and roots of our cuisine,” Elena said. “They are the roots of a place. Traditions, even if they are very old, evolve a lot.”

And it’s the women, she says, that help to translate these traditions to the next generation. “What I want to say about Latin American people is this: I know in Basque there have been lots of women chefs, even if they are not known,” Elena said. “In Latin America, the women are important to transmit the food from generation to generation. Latin food is very strong. It is up to the women to transmit it from generation to generation, not only in restaurant but also in the cooking at home.“

And that requires work and inspiration. For Elena, inspiration can come from a book, a beautiful tree on a farm, or even from a liquid soap commercial, which is how she created a cabbage soup dish that came to life with a few drops of fresh lemon juice. 

“I like to read books about food from different cultures,” Elena said. “Old books, new books. Most importantly, I look at everything through the eyes of a chef.” Hence the soap commercial turned culinary masterpiece.

There is no denying that Elena and her family are passionate about what they do every day. They don’t just cook food, they live it. It’s something you can hear in her voice and taste in their food. The legacy they are creating is magical. “This only has value,” Elena said, “if we don’t forget the taste. Even with all the presentation and screens, we can’t forget the taste, the products. You can never make a good plate without the best products and taste. For me, these values are forever."