Chef Hilario Arbelaitz will say goodbye in December after a 52-year career in his farmhouse in Oiartzun, Guipúzcoa
The restaurant Zuberoa, Located in an old farmhouse in the Iturrioz neighbourhood, in Oiartzun (Guipúzcoa), it will close at the end of the year.
So the chef Hilario Arbelaitz will say goodbye to a 52-year career, in which his cuisine has been “in constant evolution” and has been recognized internationally, although always faithful to the roots despite having paid a price for it.
Perhaps the biggest was the loss of one of the two Michelin stars of which this family restaurant, in which his brothers are also linked Eusebio and Joxé Mari, enjoyed for 17 years, although the one that they left the preserve for 36.
“They took one away from us because it was a time when it seemed that only innovation and modernism were worth it, that the kitchens of before had become outdated even if you were evolving,” said Arbelaitz, 71.
“We,” he adds, “despite the fact that the guides demanded something else of you, we told them no, that we were going to continue on our way, that it was the one that brought us people, the people who also came back, and that that was more important than what they were taking from us. The clients accepted our philosophy and we have worked hard“, emphasizes the cook.
The closure announcement won’t be official until November 10, but it says it’s virtually impossible for business to continuenor with his brother Joxe Mari, the little one, nor in the hands of some of the cooks of a team made up of 27 people, mostly from the town and neighboring towns who have been in Zuberoa for years.
The sacrifice
The Arbelaitz, explains Hilario, have always been the first to arrive and the last to leave, in very long hours that require “a lot of work and sacrifice” and in which only the workers have a schedule, they do not. It is difficult for employees to want to take the baton.
“It is a very personal restaurant, very much one of the three brothers, and the fact that this is missing is what can hold them back, since they have not been visible heads,” said Arbelaitz, one of the promoters of the new Basque cuisine.
And not just artists like Robert de Niro, Woody Allen and Bruce Springsteen, also athletes such as Rafa Nadal and a good handful of scientists who have won the Nobel Prize, who have come to Zuberoa with the help of physicist Pedro Miguel Etxenike and some of whom have repeated on their own, such as Boss, who returned to restaurant to enjoy his cheesecake again. Another essential dish follows on the menu: the foie gras with chickpea broth.
He emphasizes that foreign tourism has been essential for Zuberoa, especially with the 2008 crisis, when business meals began “to fail”, and after the summer, when local people return to work and those from outside make the restaurant ” stay alive” because, being on vacation, they can afford to enjoy the night time and return by taxi to their hotels.
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Arbelaitz is very satisfied that young people who learned in the kitchen of Zuberoa and who are already the present of the kitchen are “happy” to have worked in his restaurant. They are chefs like Andoni Luis Aduriz, from the two-star Mugaritz; the media David de Jorge; Daniel Lopezfrom San Sebastian Kokotxa; Javier Goya, from the Triciclo group; Y Jaime Ouzof the Arbidel de Ribadesella, among many others.
What Hilario Arbelaitz is sure of is that today’s Zuberoa, with full reservations until December 31, is going to close its doors and that, if someone decides to continue in the kitchen of that old Oiartzun farmhouse, they will to do without them.