l'art de vivre

Beside Bodegôn Sarria, A Fuego Negro is also one of our top-3 Pintxos bars, we enjoyed on our Spain trip.

“Black fire” is the translated name and in comparison to most of the other Pintxos-bars here in San Sebastian, which are furnished very traditional with wood and tiles, this bar is very modern and offers also a very modern Spanish Pintxos cuisine. Black and red are the main colours, R&B, Hip-Hop und Lounge music is coming from the loudspeakers and on a big black board all available Pintxos are listed. The last evenings we tried one Pintxos-bar after another, so we were in the mood for sitting at a table again and opted to be seated in the small restaurant area. In contrast to the bar the restaurant was quite empty, only three tables were taken but after some busy nights we enjoyed that.

À la carte is not available here, only two tasting menus: one with 8 and the other one with 11 courses, both of them are served as a surprise. I think you can guess which menu we chose. :) The first courses were served very fast but they slowed down after we asked them to do so. Each meal was described in detail and we received recommendations how to eat it to get the perfect flavour experience. At this point I have to compliment the service girl on being very attentive. She managed the restaurant by herself and spoke a good English which is anything else than a matter of course in this region.
The Amuse-Bouche combined an Andalusian white wine, Iberian garlic and Jamôn. After that a tomato soup was served:

As you can see what was served was not looking like we would expect a tomato soup to look like. A glaring orange ball on roasted bread crumbs was on the plate and we were instructed to put the ball in full into the mouth because it was hard on the outside but liquid inside.

The order was that we should eat the avocado- and hazelnut ice together with the crabmeat ball. What we did but for sure we also tasted each one separately. It was really a big difference in the taste!
A glass filled with mussels in tomato puree at the bottom, followed by bechamel sauce and topped with crispy pork rind was our next course. Strange combination but it was really good.

“Dirty salad” was the name of the fourth course and the salad was presented in a clean glass bowl. But we have been instructed to mix everything together to get a “dirty salad”. :) Green salad, herbs and grilled vegetables, mixed with a smoky tomato dressing and some cereals was a really sensation of taste.

The toast slice for the next course was a little bit wishy-washy and not our cup of tea. Roast beef and mustard was ok but all in all nothing special.

The 7th course was my favourite one: garlic risotto with spices and herbs. I LOVE garlic, I LOVE risotto, I LOVE herbs, I LOVE spices so it was a perfect combination for me. Luckily it tasted not less good than it looked.

People in Spain love their “Bacalao” it is something Spanish cuisine is also quite famous for. Our cod was vacuum cooked accompanied by cauliflower puree and garnished with sprouts. Ok, no more and no less.

I really didn’t liked the pig’s chin in the main course. Usually my hubby is very picky with fatty food but strangely he had no problems with this chin which was far too fat for my liking. The fat was tough and it was hardly possible to remove it from the tiny meat part. So I was concentrating on the potatoes with vanilla-lemon-foam, one more interesting combination on this menu.

Second highlight for this evening, in addition to the risotto, was the candied sweet tomato on goat cream cheese lying in oregano jelly. It was a doozie, really wonderful!

For dessert they brought us a chocolate-CD. Nice idea but in the end it was simple chocolate.

Don’t forget to go to the restroom, it’s funny there.

Tags: pinchos, pintxos, san sebastian, spain, spainFrance2010

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