Chef Elena Arzak
Award-winning Basque chef Elena Arzak is the latest in a long line of chefs from the same family. Working in the same eponymous restaurant that her great-grandparents began as a tavern in San Sebastián, she creates innovative yet traditional dishes alongside her father, Juan Mari Arzak, who pioneered the New Basque cuisine in the 1970s
LUX: Tell us about your restaurant?s history.

Elena Arzak: The restaurant has existed since 1897, and I am a fourth generation chef. The restaurant has been in the same building in San Sebastián. When I was a little girl, I lived next to the restaurant, and I used to come round a lot during the summer holidays to visit my grandmother who was a chef, and my mother who also worked here. And to be with my father, who I have now worked with for 25 years. LUX: You travelled a lot. Has your cooking been inspired by any particular place"

EA: I?ve always maintained my family?s philosophy that travelling is a constant source of new ideas. You can get so many ideas in a small neighbouring village, as well as abroad. I like to visit other cultures because the food and ingredients that for them are familiar, for us they are new. And Basque cuisine has a code of flavours. I can pick up ideas and adapt them to my own code of flavours.
Elena Arzak’s ‘vacuno selado’, a salt beef dish
LUX: Is it correct that your father started the New Basque cuisine"

EA: Well, he started serving nouvelle cuisine in 1976 in Ma...