Spain has four restaurants rated in the Top 10 in the world, holding number 1 position for the past several years. It has six restaurants in the Top 50 in the world.
While in northern Spain we visited Etxebarri one of these fantastic restaurants, and Lennox the head chef of the restaurant (and hails from Brisbane) gave me a tour of the kitchen.
Unlike most of the top restaurants Etxebarri does not have an army in the kitchens preparing incredible looking food. There is Victor (the owner), Lennox (the aussie head chef), a pastry-cook and an assistant. Pretty impressive for a world-class restaurant.
Etxebarri’s claim to fame is incredibly fresh food cooked perfectly over hot coals. There are no recipes to speak of. But there is an amazing cooking process which starts with just the right sort of wood, creating the right heat in the coals, and then regulating the heat which gets to the food by the use of amazing grill stations and cooking implements.
The restaurant is an old converted stone pub in a village of some two dozen people. There are no more than six buildings in the entire village … yet Etxebarri attracts visitors from all over the world.
The business lesson which struck me upon visiting Etxebarri is that their success is based on doing one thing really well, focussing on getting the freshest ingredients, and cooking them to perfection. They haven’t overcomplicated the process of cooking, instead they have consistently improved the cooking process and continue to do so.
They deliver the one thing that every diner wants …… fabulous food, nothing more and nothing less.
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