January 19, 2023
The Food of Bilbao: Set Menus & Bread Will Destroy Youby Randi / April 1, 2015Vegan Guide to Michelin Restaurants: Asador Extebarri in Axpe, Spain
*This post is part of a series in which I eat fancy Michelin-starred meals and then brag about it.
In a tiny town 30 minutes outside Bilbao, Spain stands a little cottage where wood-fired magic is created. Asador Extebarri, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in the Axpe region, is famous for grilling pretty much everything on the menu. Given its cookery method, I was nervous going there as a vegan, even though they assured me I could be well accommodated. Would I just be given 20 courses of grilled vegetables? How special can that be? Really, really, ridiculously special, it turns out.
So fancy once you get escorted upstairs !
Tucked away in the middle of nowhere, Extebarri is really a lovely spot. It looks like the Baker’s stone cottage or something from the outside, but when you enter it’s a rollicking bar filled with locals. At first, I was confused, looking at the bar patrons and thinking, hmm is this what people are wearing to eat at this super fance restaurant? What is this, Broadway today? But no, the bar is just, like, the local bar! Once the restaurant is ready for you, they will escort you upstairs, where the atmosphere and the decor are completely different.
The servers were uniformly friendly and they tried to be helpful (the language barrier kept me from comprehending what exactly they were describing each dish as). Like most Michelin restaurants, it was a set menu of an insane number of courses, and they already had the vegan menu printed up and placed inside my menu booklet. These menus, by the way, are probably bigger than you are:
The servers were uniformly friendly and they tried to be helpful (the language barrier kept me from comprehending what exactly they were describing each dish as). Like most Michelin restaurants, it was a set menu of an insane number of courses, and they already had the vegan menu printed up and placed inside my menu booklet. These menus, by the way, are probably bigger than you are:
The enormous menu blocking most of Husband (which is why I’m allowed to post this) |
The veg menu |
As you can see, the vegan menu looks mainly like an assortment of plain vegetables. I’m sure the other vegans out there have groaned as much as I have when restaurants say they can feed you and end up giving you the ubiquitous ‘Grilled Vegetable Plate’. It’s the worst, right? So boring and you’re like ugh I could do this at home but I wouldn’t because I’m a good cook and can make more interesting food. Well. That’s because the vegetables weren’t grilled at Asador Extebarri. There’s no way in hell you could make vegetables as incredible as these Michelin-starred ones were. We toured the ‘kitchen’, which was more like a complex wood shed, with piles upon piles of different kinds of wood, each one perfect for grilling a different food. It’s all very detailed and complicated and woodsy. The ‘stoves’ consist of lever and pulley systems for ensuring that each dish and each dish’s components remain the proper distance from the fire. Who knew that wood-firing was such an intricate art? It all lends itself to some of the most perfect and delicious vegetable dishes imaginable. Some were a little boring, yes, and some were normal levels of good, but then some of these dishes were superb.
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In contrast to most fancy restaurants with crazy endless tasting menus, we were given bread at the start. And then — it never stopped! Erma P! So good. I love bread. And these lovely Spaniards gave us like huge baguette halves constantly instead of little hunks every now and then. So funny. Although, in hindsight, considering how painfully full we were not even halfway through the meal, eating all this bread was probably a bad idea.
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Enormous bread |
So hey let’s start reviewing the 100 or so plates I was served! The order of the menu was not strictly adhered to so that my dishes lined up better with Husband’s, which I appreciated, but they still got to all the dishes listed, which I appreciated more. (The first time they skipped a few I was like NO BRING ME FOOD but they brought those later. (Audra McDonald skipped a song once in her concert program and DIDN’T go back and get to it so that’s still like something keeping me up at night.))
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First up was a little treat from the kitchen, small grilled bread (more bread!) with tomato and salt and the greatest olive oil I’ve tasted in years. Oh mannn. So freaking good!
The first real courses for me were Salad Leaves and Lettuce Hearts. Husband can tell you that most of my Salads that I make at home only consist of Lettuce Hearts, so I was curious to see what the difference was here. Apparently, Lettuce Hearts are self-explanatory and Salad Leaves are curlier lettuces. Also, Lettuce Hearts all over Spain come with wayyy too much onion. I can’t eat an entire onion’s worth of raw onion. I’ll do my best but come on. It’s raw onion. And not even cippolini oh-nee-on. Husband was like, you have to eat all that onion, it’s like a $20 onion. No, thank you though. Anyway, both were nice and fresh and very lightly dressed (thank you, I hate too much dressing), but pretty basic. It was nice to have something simple and fresh to start but it did make me nervous for what was to come. I should not have been! My first warm vegetable dish was the Golden Chanterelles. Mushrooms have always been one of my favorite foods, dating back from when I thought they only came on top of pizza and I felt it too basic to say that pizza was my favorite food because that’s everyone’s favorite food. But now mushrooms are legit my faves, so this dish was very exciting. I particularly love that they came in a little personal pan. I wanted to ask if I could keep it but we were traveling EasyJet sooo no room. Anyway, the mushrooms were really good, smoky and just firm enough. Weirdly, though, I preferred the saltier, oiler, more garlicky mushrooms from Busterri. Maybe the Golden Chanterelles just needed a pinch of salt, or maybe my mushroom tastes are akin to my chocolate taste (I prefer cheaper sugary milkier chocolate to ‘high quality’ dark because yummy).
Next up was one of my favorites, Cream of Beans. It’s a normal bean soup but I love that name and I was so stoked to finally have beans! It was easy (too easy!) to find veggies all weekend in Bilbao, but impossible to get any vegan protein in restaurants. Hurray for beans! It was a lovely soup.
The following vegetable grilled to perfection was the artichokes, or according to the totally descriptive and helpful menu, Artichoke. These were splendid little oiled and salted buggers that I could eat 1000 of. They had a light balsamicky drizzle that was just the right, subtle amount (too much is the worst). Hot damn they were so good!
The one-two punch of the Artichoke with the next dish, the Leek, was the most impressive section of the meal. Looking at the picture to the right, you’re probably thinking, omg, that is the least impressive dish I have ever seen in any restaurant ever. Well, that might be true, but it was also one of the best tasting. These were freaking plain grilled leeks with olive oil and salt, but whichever wood they were grilled on at whichever lever/pulley height they used made them actually magical. Seriously I cannot imagine any leek in any other preparation ever being as phuhnom as these were. My recommendation to try Extebarri if you have the chance is 70% based on these leeks.
I was confused about whether the next dish was the Baby Beans or the Green Peas, but we decided they were the Baby Beans because Husband’s menu also came with Green Peas so we got them at the same time. They look exactly the same though. These were yummy and hey more beans! I’m getting so strong!
Beetroot was next, and if ever there were beets to convince you that not all beets taste like dirt (#NotAllBeets), it was these. They were a bit tart with their natural juices mixing with vinegar? maybe? (we couldn’t understand most things the waiters said, and sometimes they simply said “I don’t know how to say this in English. Enjoy!”), but whatever was going on, it worked. I would have preferred only two beet pieces instead of four, because this is where I started to get hella full.
Another mushroom dish came next yay! These March Mushrooms were fluffier than the sauteed-seeming Chanterelles, and they were in a subtle and delicious vegetable broth. I don’t know if March Mushrooms is a kind of mushroom or if they were just what was growing in March (when we were there…which makes more sense…) but either way I’m sold. They had a cool texture almost of raw mushrooms but with the much better taste of cooked.
Next were those tricky little Green Peas! They came in an adorable little cup and they were so delicious. Fresh peas are incredible and life-changing; if you haven’t had them before and have only had frozen peas in your life then you need to go to a farmers market and buy fresh peas and make something with them because they are amazing but what you make won’t be as amazing as this little cup of perfect peas was.
Some of you may know that I’m not the world’s biggest red pepper fan. Traipsing around Europe, I see tons of little kids eating raw red pepper strips out of little baggies and I’m like KIDS, simmer down with that nonsense, don’t you know there’s candy in the world? I can’t do raw pepper unless they’re overcrowded with other tastes. Cooked red pepper is only a little bit better for me. Well. Despite my semi-aversion, and despite my being stuffed beyond belief by the time this giant plate of red peppers arrived, I ate the entire thing. These red peppers were omg. Ridiculous. I lightly dragged a tine of my fork (my fork!) across them and it cut right through without any effort. They just fell apart and were heaven. Who knew?
The next dish was hilarious. The cute little bowl of ‘Cereals’, as the menu says, tasted EXACTLY. LIKE. SUGAR SMACKS. You know the cereal with the frog? This was them in the fancy form. The cereals were puffed spelt and other grains mixed with sliced nuts and a sugar syrup. I was very impressed when someone came out from the kitchen to ask me if I would eat honey, and when I said no said they would be bringing my dish after they remedied the error of their assumption. It was worth the short wait, though I do wish it came with the desserts and not in the middle of more savory items. I mean, after all, it was sugar smacks. Sooo good!
You may recall that I got full many, many dishes ago, so you can assume that by this point I was in actual pain. We all were. So we could only laugh when actual normal-restaurant-entree-sized ‘mains’ came out next. Mine was an excellent black truffle risotto. Considering we were in the land where they actually sell the Thermomix, we cracked up saying ‘Hot wet rice! It’s hot wet rice!’ over and over. Side note, laughing hysterically while painfully full is not a smart thing to do. But this was delicious hot wet rice.
Between my savories and my dessert courses and while Husband was given like his 14th piece of steak, I was presented with a goblet of pineapple water ice. It was very mild, mostly ice and not pineapple, but at this point in the meal it was a perfect palate cleanser. It also helped my full belly feel better. ALSO, it was called ‘Water Pineapple’, which I think was just supposed to be Pineapple Water Ice except ‘water ice’ is only a Philly thing so really I just don’t know.
On to dessert! I am used to getting boring plates of fresh fruit at most places, even when it’s fancy, even when they say they can accommodate me, but it’s still a little disappointing to not get something more interesting. Well, this was the most interesting plate of fresh fruit. The strawberries were grilled so they had a rich smoky flavor that worked so well, I really couldn’t get over it. It was accompanied by fresh edible flower petals and a fantastically weird and unique blood orange gel. I don’t know how they made that gel or how they magicked the smoky strawberries but it was all good.
My final (almost there!) course was Baked Apple with Pure Cocoa. I usually don’t like fruit with chocolate but I figured it would be nice here and got excited. I should have realized ‘Pure Cocoa’ meant ‘unsweetened chocolate’ — it was really freaking pure and super bitter with not a trace of sweetness! Yeesh! Mixed with the delicious baked apple it was better, but the apple would have been better without the chocolate or with some kind of plain sorbet (ice cream is too much to ask for).
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Little leaves little leaves little innocent leaves 
The Golden Chanterelles (Will you still love meee tomorrowwwww DO YOU GET IT LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU KNOW WHY THAT GOT IN MY HEAD) 
Cream of the bean yeah yeah yeah oh how I love the cream of the bean 
Amazing Artichokes 
Beyond Leeks 
Baby Beans 
Beets beets they are good 
March Mushrooms 
Little green peas, buddy!!! 
Red Pepper Starfish 
‘Cereals’ 
HOT WET RICE! 
Water pineapple? What is that? Is that a thing? 
Grilled strawberries with blood orange gel 
Baked apple and sad cocoa |
It was still a nice end to a wonderful meal. If you are ever in Bilbao or wanting a reason to go there (well, the outskirts), I can highly recommend this restaurant. It’s very expensive, yes, but it’s an experience. Oh, and our 8:30pm reservation (seated promptly) got us out the door by about 1:30am…so…plan accordingly.
GETTING THERE
As I mentioned in my Bilbao guide, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to use the trains, not only because of the language barrier, but because apparently no one worked in the stations! All-day siestas? Anyway, we ended up having to take a taxi to Axpe for Asador Extebarri. The same driver that picked us up at our hotel drove us home at the end of the night (in the morning, really) and was extremely good (no looking at phones or anything!). His name is Eduardo at CLASS Servicio de Taxi and his local number is 637-505-212.
As I mentioned in my Bilbao guide, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to use the trains, not only because of the language barrier, but because apparently no one worked in the stations! All-day siestas? Anyway, we ended up having to take a taxi to Axpe for Asador Extebarri. The same driver that picked us up at our hotel drove us home at the end of the night (in the morning, really) and was extremely good (no looking at phones or anything!). His name is Eduardo at CLASS Servicio de Taxi and his local number is 637-505-212.
ASADOR EXTEBARRI, AXPE SPAIN
Water speed: Pretty good, but like all restaurants of this caliber, it’s bottled. You don’t really notice that charge amid the rest of it, but still. I know it’s common outside the U.S. but I am spoiled!
Service: Very friendly and kind. In the beginning of the meal, I felt a little bit rushed, which probably is responsible for getting full so quickly. They got their pacing down better as we went on. Also, they couldn’t explain some dishes in English, which obviously is my problem and not theirs, but it’s worth knowing if you go.
Bathrooms: Nice and clean although I was scared that the extraordinarily heavy lock didn’t work.
Food: Really great! Some dishes were average, but more were wonderful.
Bonus: A very fancy restaurant where you can join in the experience even as a vegan!
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Getting Swole: SIMPLE Protein-Packed Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
Since I’m a human who lives on this planet, I am in love with the magic combination of chocolate and peanut butter. It is objectively better than any other duo and I will fight any suggestions you may make in the comments. A lot of British people don’t understand peanut butter and I think that might be the real reason behind the American Revolution. As an American import, I myself might eat more peanut butter than anyone else in this marmite-eating land. (Marmite and peanut butter are not similar or interchangeable in the least, and the fact that some people still believe this lie causes a good deal of British nose-turning at my fren PB and as a result much of my consternation.) I ran a little bakery market stall on the weekends for a short while and always had peanut butter cookies on offer and people would be like ‘ew definitely don’t want those’ and I would leap from behind the stall and shove the peanut butter cookies down their throats and scream HOW DO YOU LIKE IT NOW MORON? I don’t do the stall anymore.
So yeah you could say I am a huge fan of the stuff. (Notice how I use real, inoffensive words like “am in love with” and “am a huge fan of” instead of taking tragic stories of mentally ill people and turning their names into cutesy trendy vocab because I am not a FUCKING MONSTER, PEOPLE. STOP DOING IT.) Given my medical need to eat chocolate every day, putting the two together makes perfect culinary sense and is an efficient method for ensuring I eat both in a day. What’s more, I need to fit in a lot of protein during the day too, so it helps my #goals to use my desserts or snacks as a vehicle for protein too. So it makes delicious wise sense for me to combine all these needs into one amazing dessert. I know what you are thinking: “Wait, didn’t I already read this post and didn’t you already give me this recipe?” No but I can see why you went there. The last recipe I gave was for protein-packed cashew butter cups and these are chocolate peanut butter cups. Yes I have a one-track mind. But really, the previous recipe is amaaaazing and produces a cookie dough-like filling, but it is complicated. There’s cashew butter and protein powders and flax and coconut oil and OATS? and F-ING CHICKPEAS. If you feel like getting all that shit out of your cupboard and having your husband ask like mine did ‘good lord why did you put oats and beans in a chocolate thing?’, then go nuts. They’re worth it. But, if you’re like I was this past week and you just want a simple PB cup that requires FOUR INGREDIENTS only (plus the chocolate), thereby saving you a lot of time but still being insanely delicious, then this post is for you.
SIMPLE PROTEIN PEANUT BUTTER CUPS
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Ingredients
For the chocolate:
For the filling:
Directions (or just follow the pictures!)
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GET YOURSELF SOME NEW ORCHESTRATIONS 
(how much do you love my gigantic food processor it’s GIGANTIC) 
NEW ROUTINES AND RED VELVET CURTAINS 
GET A FEATHERED HAT FOR THE BABY |
husbo p got me flowers 🙂
Enjoy! Here’s my requisite tupperware shot.
The Frog Restaurant in Hoxton: One of London’s Best Vegan Tasting Menus
Over the weekend, I tried the vegan tasting menu at a non-vegan place and I was blown away – I think it’s one of the best vegan tasting menus out there! I know I’m starting off with a REAL bold statement but damn if I’m not telling the truth. You may already know all about our crippling addiction to tasting menus and eating at all the Michelin-starred restaurants that will accommodate vegans (you can read about some of those here), even though as previous Vegan Michelin Series reviews will tell you, it’s all usually very good but kind of like ‘eh it’s still just a well-cooked vegetable; is it worth all this money’. But I was pleasantly surprised by The Frog, a very hip very cool restaurant in Hoxton Square that’s doing actually creative tasting menus, even for vegans, and has received a Michelin Bib Gourmand in recent years, which warrants its place in this series (but honestly it was good enough that I’d be putting it here even without official Michy recognition).
I know I said in one of the last of the Vegan Michelin Series that we were probably going to stop for a while but a) that was like a year ago so we did b) this was a very special occasion and 3) this tasting menu was only £50 per person! That’s like normal eating out in London prices! (Side note, are you so glad I learned how to use the £ sign and stopped saying ‘pounddollars’. That’s growth.)
Like all tasting menus, this menu describes what’s to come using as few key words as possible so you really have no idea what to expect but it looks and sounds g-d elegant. Also, the sparsely worded menu makes it seem like you aren’t getting a lot of food but as usual we had to roll ourselves home. They quickly brought our first snacks, which I appreciated because I was as hungry as I was excited and also I can’t stay out too late especially when we have to walk through SHOREDITCH on a WEEKEND to get home man alive it was a nightmare of drunken crowdedness.
My first bunch of snacks were called “heritage carrot, roasted hazelnuts, mint” and “kohlrabi, nori, tarragon”. I like these words but was curious to see what they meant when put together.
The little kohlrabi bite was good, though the nori was extra strong and made it a bit too salty for me. But that carrot bite was literally incredible. I was/am almost embarrassed to be so bowled over by a jesus forking cracker with barbecued-tasting carrots on a delightful carrot puree but it was magical, and it makes my head hurt to think about how this was possible. This was my first Jon-Lovitz-on-Friends impression in a while (“Like it?? I could eat a hundred of ’em!”). This goddamn carrot cracker was my first indication that this was going to be amazing. (But seriously why was this so good?? How did you do it? What dark magick hath you wrought?)
Our next snacks – oh, so for tasting menus and Michelin-y places they like to throw a bunch of small bites at your face before you get to the actual courses so you feel well-liked by the chef and full as fork sooner rather than later – were just as good if not better! I got a sourdough cracker topped with pea hummus and dollops of…something jammy? I got jammed! Just as I weirdly went off about how amazing a simple bite of carrot was, I’m going to do the same about versions of sourdough right now. This cracker was amazing. I wish I could buy bags on bags of these crackers since they somehow nailed the exact perfect strength and texture for holding hummus, and as you know I eat hummus every day. EVERY DAY SON. I forget what the jammy dodger drops were all about but it added the perfect bit of sweetness to cut through the mild flavors. And guys, HUMMUS! Most of my tasting menu overviews complain about how they never think to give vegans protein because they’re always too busy going ‘oh look at me, look at me, I can cook a vegetable like you’ve never seen it before’ and you’re like ‘that’s fantastic and you’re right but also my muscles’ so I was prettay, prettay stoked to get peas so early on.
I can’t believe I wrote so much about a g-d cracker with hummus but it was really good.
Also pictured above was one of our favorite things ever and also our downfall: the bread. The Frog’s rye sourdough bread was forking phenom, and while Z got his with the place’s very famous chicken butter (gross)(not like ‘gross’ Z said it was great but I mean like gross for us sorry), I got a pat of house-made vegan butter! And by ‘pat’ I mean ‘patrick’ really because this was a lotttt of butter, and it was forking delicious. So delicious that we…asked for more bread. I know. You NEVER ask for more bread at a tasting menu. We are not new to this! We know the drill – you are already super full before you even get to dessert, and then they keep bringing you more food than you can handle and you leave feeling disgustingly full but like so happy but also SO hurt! We know all this! We done f-ed up because of that damn delicious bread. And the butter. Dammit bread and butter! Why are you so good? We had so much and then I was already full before my first actual course came. NEVER ASK FOR MORE BREAD (except honestly do because it’s so good).
My first actual course, thank you I’m already full, was “celeriac, apple, dates”. The combo of celeriac and apple is prime fancy restaurant territory and I was like oh this will be nice but basic. Turns out this was not basic but ya basic, because guess what was inside that bundle of celeriac? TOFU! It was like a tofu cream cheese stuffed inside the bundle. Restaurants NEVER do tofu anything except chocolate mousse so this was a really nice surprise. Yasss for protein, yes for tofu in the savories! This was really good. But the best part was that Z also had a cream cheese filled dish, and when the waiter described his dish and mentioned “the richness of the cream cheese”, Z said (after he left) “well thanks for letting me eat all that damn butter.” He was hurt too. It was so good.
My next course was “roast cauliflower, kimchi, yeast”. I know – I was like ‘jfc they’re going to bring me a hunk of roasted cauliflower and call it a steak, aren’t they? ffs’ because for some reason I was still being all defensive even though everything so far was wonderful. I should really be more optimistic because hot damn guys, this cauliflower dish was like one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever had. I still can’t even believe this dish. There were a few roasted cauliflower florets but not like you’ve ever had before. They tasted like General Tso’s chicken, complete with the sticky sweet sauce in the middle. But 100x better than you’ve ever had. The cauliflower kimchi was super pungent and spicy (nice) and the creamy sauce itself was remarkable. I guess the yeast was maybe a sprinkling of nooch? I’m not sure; I didn’t ask because I was too busy saying ‘holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.’
I was so happy and so satisfied, and I relaxed a little knowing that we hit the peak of the meal and nothing else coming was going to top that (sounds weird but that’s a little relaxing, like the pressure is off). But I was wrong.
I was wrong because next up was the “flatbread, cashew, sweetcorn, jalapeno” dish and it was Mexico. It was Mexico on a plate. (It’s fitting too, because starting this week on the Travel section of this site it’s time for our epic Mexico trip. I KNOW! So I know what Mexico tastes like, guys.) This was a perfect food. I don’t know what else to say about it. The sturdy little flatbread had the most incredible texture and (I’m sooo sorry) mouthfeel, and all the components on top – that cashew cream, the corn, the jalapeno, the herby oil – exist just to be placed on that circle of magic. I made Z have a piece even though he was equally full and, in his words, “I got my own problems here!” and he agreed that it was akin to disc of rainbows. He didn’t say that.
That marked the end of our savory dishes, but there was a special in-between course that killed us both – the cheese doughnut. Mine was an oily fried dough slab covered in cashew cream and cashew dust and it killed me. Oh my god. I don’t eat too much heavy food and this was like an Iowa state fair concentrated into three bites. It was like a funnel cake from a carnival without the sugar, manhandled into a denser substance, and then topped with forking cashew cream. It was so heavy, is what I’m saying. And yes it was pretty darn good, but I think it needed either some salt or some sugar, because without any additional flavor, its flavor profile was just Fat. Every gluttonous tasting menu situation has a point where you suspect the restaurant is making fun of you, and this was theirs. Z said “this isn’t a doughnut; this is a way to get people to eat fondue with their hands!” I asked him if he liked his doughnuttier, cheese-filled version, expecting him to say ‘eh’ or something, and he sighed in fullness and horror at what he was eating and said “fucking of course”. Hilarious. We were mocking how full the other was (so full) and I said to him ‘you have to finish all that coconut!’ Here’s his dish after he ate his doughnut. (Read the caption.)
Luckily, we had little palate cleansers before dessert.
This strawberry sorbet was perfect, and I loved getting it as a little palate cleanser and not as my whole dessert. I think most restaurants have learned from their sordid past of offering vegans fruit and fruit sorbets for dessert and calling it a day, and that’s a reality I like to think all my complaining has helped bring to fruition.
I do wish that they had put this on the vegan menu though, or told me I was getting a strawberry sorbet palate cleanser, because the vegan dessert option has you choose between strawberry or pineapple and I chose strawberry. So I had two servings of this (the second on my actual dessert). Unless…maybe they had made my strawberry sorbet for my dessert and then just gave me more of it to have a palate cleanser while Z had his? Interesting.
I’m not too mad about doubling up on the sorbet though, because like I said it was delicious, and more importantly, the vegan dessert was much more than just sorbet. It was more tofu! In the form of chocolate! And yes this isn’t exactly creative but man alive I’ll never look a gift chocolate tofu mousse in the mouth. I’ll be too busy putting it in mine. This may not have been the most interesting dessert, but it was great, and I’d rather have something tried and true and delicious than another curry ice cream fail.
As usual, just when you think you’ve made it, they bring you more food to end your experience. With our bill came these chocolate truffles. Luckily, they put them in a little to-go container for us, and I got to enjoy mine the next day. It was truly great, like this entire dinner. I would highly recommend a trip to The Frog for a go at their tasting menu, especially if you need a fancy place that caters to vegans and weirdos who aren’t vegan. I believe they change their menu monthly, so get in for these amazing dishes while it’s still August. I can’t wait to go back.
THE FROG, HOXTON, LONDON, UK, EUROPE PLEASE STAY EUROPE
Water speed: Honestly, LUDICROUSLY good. Like more attentive than American Chinese restaurants where they refill your glass after every sip you take. But since we had water carafes on the table, it was a little unnecessary – you don’t have to refill my glass after every sip when I have the full bottle within reach! I can do it myself! But still, I’ll never complain about having good water service. I mean I guess I just did. But it was great. They replaced the 6 or so bottles I went through very quickly too.
Service: Really great. Like I said, sometimes it was a little extra with the water service, but overall this was some of the best if not the best service in London. Case in point: During one course, I finished my dish and my 10th bottle of water, but Z still wasn’t done and I said I’m sorry but I’ve had 15 bottles of water so I excused myself and when I got back, he told me that they came to refold my napkin (as they do) but did not take my finished plate away! THAT IS A FIRST. They did exactly what you’re supposed to do but no one ever follows that rule. Every other restaurant has always taken the empty plate away while the other diner/s were still eating, which is forking rude and also not the correct move, so bravo. The sommelier was good too and Z said he enjoyed the wine pairing.
Bathrooms: Okay so this was the only real negative I have to report. There are two single stalls, one plain, one disabled, and they were…not good. They were like the bathrooms in Starbucks but less nice. We were both really surprised.
Food: So surprisingly awesome. Some of these dishes are on my Most list. It’s so nice to find a vegan tasting menu that definitely shows respect to vegetables but also makes them fun and interesting.
Bonus: The tasting menu cost is very reasonable. It’s a fraction of the cost of other Michelin-y ones out there and yet much better. Great stuff.
2 Comments
Hi there! So happy to have stumbled upon this. I’m not seeing a date on this article, and Asador’s website says front and center that they don’t accommodate vegan/vegetarian, but I’m still hopeful that they do. My fiance and I are having our honeymoon in San Sebastian and plan to eat at Asador. I’ve been open to not maintaining my vegan way of life and to be a bit flexible during these experiences, but if they can accommodate vegans, that’s great to hear!
Hi Constance! I’m glad you found this too. Congratulations on your wedding! I went to Asador in 2015, so their policies may have changed over all this time. But it would be such a shame if they did! Especially when it was largely just produce! Please let me know if they get back to you/say otherwise. Good luck!