The Boy had planned and organised a richly packed and highly detailed weekend for 24-25 January to French and Spanish Basque country. The plan was to fly into Biarritz early on saturday morning (we got up at 4am to catch the flight!), drive to San Sebastien in Spain (30 minutes from Biarritz) and have Saturday lunch and dinner and Sunday lunch at three among the top restaurants in Europe (Arzak #5, Martin Berasategui #3, and Akelare #29 respectively), take in some sight seeing of the Basque coast/countryside in between, and end the weekend by visting the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, before flying back to London from the Bilbao airport.

But the biggest storm in France since 1999 completely ruined the Boy’s best laid plans – our plane was re-routed to Limoges, about midway through France and c.400km from Biarritz near the Spanish border. We had to rent a car and spend all day driving down to San Sebastien, sometimes having to slalom between trees that had fallen on the road and making several detours necessitated by road closures because of fallen trees. And, to add insult to injury, we were stuck in a 2-hour traffic jam just near an hour from our destination. So instead of fine dining at martin berasategui, we arrived starving in san sebastien at about midnight, and had greasy Argentinian empanadas at a local joint which had football on TV.

Happily, we managed to get a new reservation for Martin Berasategui for Sunday lunch, which was the only thing that saved the weekend from being a total and complete fiasco. I was particularly keen to try Martin Berasategui because of his reputation for innovative food (which I strongly prefer to traditional food). And I was completely blown away by the food- taste-wise, it is the best I’ve had so far, and very innovative too (though not as experimental/intellectually engaging as Fat Duck)! Furthermore, Martin Berasategui, was actually in the kitchen – at most of the other places we’ve been to that had big name chefs, the chefs were either away travelling, or not in the kitchen. And, to top off an amazing meal, we actually got to meet Martin Berasategui, the man himself, in the flesh – he shook our hands and we even took a picture with him, and got a tour of the kitchen!

I’ll write more about the food and experience another day. In the meanwhile, Happy Chinese New Year of the Ox! 🙂