Part provocateur, part mediator, Rodero pulls off a difficult balancing act at the family restaurant. The main dining room is coolly minimal, with warm woods and vases of simple flowers on the linen-draped tables. But step into the private room and you’re surrounded by photos of Jesús Rodero posing with bullfighters (he’s a regular at Club Taurino, a hangout for the sport’s aficionados, just down the block). Koldo’s techniques range all over the culinary map, but most of his ingredients, and his inspiration, come from Navarra and the Basque Country. Take cuajada, a classic Basque Navarrese dessert, in which fresh sheep’s milk and rennet are placed in a wooden vessel known as a kaiku and a burning-hot stone is added. After the stone has cooled and the milk has curdled and set, the stone is removed, leaving behind a smoky pudding that is served with sugar or honey. In his savory reinterpretation, Rodero starts with a warm coconut and sea urchin cuajada, adds cockles for a briny pop, and tops it off with trout roe, resulting in a creamy blend of tangy, sweet, and salty.
The chef, who attended an ikastola, a traditional Basque school, is particularly proud of his heritage. Under Franco’s dictatorship, Euskera (the Basque language) was outlawed and, until the Generalissimo’s demise, in 1975, you could not give your child a Basque name. (Rodero is known as “Koldo,” but his birth certificate reads “Luis Mari.”)
Yet he is as much a child of the south, celebrating produce and growers both as host of a weekly radio show that covers everything from commercial fishing techniques to the roots of local food traditions and, for the past few years, as the teacher of a summer course at the Public University of Navarra, bringing in some of Spain’s leading chefs.
When I visit Rodero in Pamplona, he insists that we drive south to see the bounty of La Ribera and to meet his favorite produce purveyor. The landscape is austere and reminiscent of the American Southwest, all big sky and flat vistas marked by the occasional butte of striated stone. Only an hour’s drive from Pamplona, it feels like another country.
At a stone cottage, a former sheepherder’s refuge, we meet produce man Floren (who goes by only one name), a traditional guitarist for Barricada, one of Spain’s most famous heavy metal bands, who still looks the part with his ponytail and ripped jeans. A group of his friends have joined us at Floren’s cottage, and between tall tales and much joking, they begin to cook. Floren grills lamb chops in the fireplace while his friend Lino shaves paper-thin slices of marbled jamón ibérico from a massive shank. After we’ve consumed cured sausages, hearty bread, Roncal and Udiazábal cheeses, and some Navarrese rosés and reds, Floren assembles the components for a traditional ribereño recipe that he learned from his mother—an earthy asparagus and onion soup with poached eggs. “The broth is made with the stalks that were broken off or damaged during the harvest,” he tells us, “so nothing is wasted.” As we talk about the herbaceous flavor of the lamb, Floren gets up abruptly, jumps into his car, and drives away, only to return a few minutes later carrying branches of ontina, a brush-like herb that grows wild in the area, so that we can smell how its aroma matches the flavor notes in the meat.
Later, we head north again, through the winding roads of the Basque region to meet Jesús Orduna, whose family has been producing Roncal, Navarra’s famous sheep’s-milk cheese, for generations. Rodero uses this hard cheese with the smooth texture and nutty flavor in his restaurant’s cheese plate and in dishes like a langoustine and vegetable salad with a Roncal and wasabi cream. Above his ground-floor shop, marked Kabila Enea (“House of Kabila”), Orduna has created a museum dedicated to Roncal.
Back at the restaurant, Rodero is developing a version of Floren’s asparagus soup, a tribute to traditional ribereño dishes, at the same time that he is serving a tomato and violet soup with vegetable stems and marinated prawns that is both an homage to Navarra’s cardoons, asparagus, broccoli, and turnip, each in its season, and also a nod to Spain’s kitchen alchemists. Orange-colored spheres float in the soup, and when you put one in your mouth and pop it, orange juice explodes over your tongue. The wine list features bottlings from some of the best Navarrese vintners—Ochoa, Chivite, and Otazu. And through his classes and radio show, Rodero is trying to make Pamplona a meeting place for culinary minds.
“Since I happen to be in Navarra,” he says, “I am trying to give my food a sense of place and tradition; I’m trying to pull the cart forward.”
The Details
Staying There
If you don’t mind being a short ride from the city center, your best bet is the AC Ciudad de Pamplona (011-34-948-26-60-11; www.ac-hotels.com; from $130). Sleek, modern rooms decorated with contemporary art (plus a better-than-average breakfast buffet) make up for the distance. Hotel Tres Reyes (011-34-948-22-66-00; hotel3reyes.com; from $227), the city’s leading luxury hotel, is a bit soulless, but its proximity to the Old Town is convenient. For a place with real character, stay 15 miles southwest of Pamplona at Hotel El Peregrino (Puente La Reina; 011-34-948-34-00-75; hotelelperegrino.com; from $186). This comfortable old stone inn with slightly over-the-top décor—in the town where the two ancient pilgrims’ routes to Santiago de Compostela converge—might best be described as “medieval chic.”
Pinterest
