The San Sebastian Gastronomika cameras snuck into the midday service at the Azurmendi restaurant. Benjamín Lana followed Eneko Atxa in the course of his daily work in the kitchen, where the chef commented on details and dishes. The result is a unique documentary.

Benjamín Lana slipped into the three-starred Azurmendi restaurant in Larrabetzu (Bizkaia) and became Eneko Atxa's shadow in the course of a live lunchtime service at his restaurant. It was an unprecedented experience which, thanks to the sponsorship of the Basque Government, Gastronomika was able to provide this year and which allowed us to get a better idea of what goes on inside a an haute cuisine restaurant. “This was not a presentation”, explained Lana, “it was about showing real life in a restaurant”. So simple, so unusual.

Atxa welcomed Gastronomika into his kitchen just as the first customers began to arrive at his premises. The 20 chefs he has at his disposal went back and forth behind the cameras, demonstrating the perfect synchronisation of a professional kitchen. At the head of this team, after Atxa, he introduced us to his head chef, Pilar Lojero. “Pili”, as she is known, sang orders and surveyed the outgoing dishes. “The waiters receive the customers and tell us how many people there are, if they have allergies, in what language we need to serve them and their tolerance of spices, for example. With this information, we can get to work in the kitchen”, explained the chef.

Although neither Atxa nor Lana have moved from the kitchen, the former explained: “We receive the customers in the garden, where we treat them to some snacks, which arrive in a picnic container”. He has been at Azurmendi since 2012, “when we inaugurated this new (totally sustainable) building and were awarded the third star”, he explained, while showing the camera how the kitchen is divided up into stations. 

Detailing them, he revealed operational aspects such as the numbering of the trays with the dishes with the corresponding table number to follow an order (numbers which, by the way, the waiter removes when he picks them up) or the function of the assembly, where he checks every dish. “We try to finish off every dish just before we go out to the dining room”, he added, while checking out a plate of prawns, vegetable gel and tomato slush, one of the house classics.

The camera followed him while Atxa talked about the sequence of the menu, its freshness and his personal love of hake cheeks al pil-pil, and the rapport he has with the restaurant manager, Matteo Manzini, who considers himself to be a “Basque from Lezama”. One can see the cooperation, the good atmosphere, but also the seriousness and professionalism inherent in a place of such a level. To exemplify this, the chef described an example of their work: “Every day, before we go to lunch, all the preparations we have in progress are tested to check that they are good”.

This is an unprecedented 45-minute documentary, where only the voices of Atxa and Lana can be heard because silence predominates. “We like to work like this”. Details of excellence seen and experienced first-hand.