A TRIO OF STARS

Three cooks donostiarras the maximum qualification of the 'Guide Michelin' meet for the first time after the Subijana ascent

Berasategui, Subijana and Arzak joke in his celebration of three stars Michelin for Akelarre.

They are like big children. Pranks wear out, they discuss who speaks more, they refute his answers. The appointment is in Akelarre, the restaurant of Igueldo: Pedro Subijana is a host because it is the last one of the three to have reached the maximum qualification of the Guide Michelin.

It is the first time that is joined before a camera since there was known the news of three stars of Subijana. to assemble them it was not easy: they have agendas of the minister, become infested with trips and commitments, although his priority is always to be tied each one to his kitchen.

Subijana is serene, with his air of calm teacher and knowing that it plays at home, where it teaches the mock-up of what will be, in year and a half, the hotel that gets up along with the restaurant. Martín Berasategui comes punctually but joker after Artisan has inaugurated the new head office of the Union. And Juan Mari Arzak appears breathing heavily: it has presented his new book and has just opened the restaurant after his holidays in the spa of Cestona, where it has slimmed «six kilos more or less».

This way they are seen

Subijana still savors the authorization of three stars. Juan Mari Arzak remembers how they came to him, in 1989: "It was a big happiness, skylight, but I have always lived through awards and distinctions with serenity because I receive them as if they had given them to other». Martín Berasategui counts than in 2001, when his three stars communicated to him, «I was walking only at dawn along La Concha like hypnotized».

The three coincide that it is a «historical fact» that in San Sebastian there are three restaurants with three stars, «something that only happens in Paris», and although they understand that sometimes there could be certain weariness in the public opinion about the excess of gastronomy, «it is not necessary to forget that it is one of the big wealths of this country».

- They are known years ago. Arzak: how is Subijana closely?

- Arzak: We have lived through so many things together that I see his stars as mine. It is arranged but imaginatively simultaneously, and the most educated of all of us. For me he has been like the pianist Iñaki Salvador for Mikel Laboa: a reference that ties me to the order. We are so friendly that we can say to ourselves what we think without getting angry, although sometimes there are droves of donkeys.

- And Martín Berasategui?

- Arzak: We always say to him joking that it is like a wild boar, a torpedo: it has a natural force that can with everything. He is one of the best cooks of the world in the office, and a tidal wave in the life.

- Subijana: how is Arzak?

- Subijana: Juan Mari is another phenomenon of the nature. It has a skill: if aversion sees that someone has he is hung of the chepa until it makes him change opinion. It is capable of receiving everything necessary so that his restaurant keeps on being the best, and it never gives up. We are like a marriage: sometimes we have been on the point of coming to the hands, but that has always increased our friendship.

- And how is Martín?

- Subijana: I sign that thing about wild boar as virtue. It is affectionate and also we had our differences in the past, but we overcame them. We are three friends with big projects ahead.

- Martín: how is Arzak?

- Berasategui: A pioneer in the kitchen, with the only competitive spirit but a permanent will to make happy those who surround him.

- Subijana?

- Berasategui: Those that we are in the office we know that he was living in the summit many years ago, before these three stars. It is human, kindly and with own style.

- In the past they had quarrels.

- Berasategui: In some moment I thought that perhaps they were annotating too much the area and did not allow us to go out for the new ones, but now we are a pineapple.

- Subijana: It has been demonstrated that there is place for all and we open the arms to the new ones.

- Arzak: I believe that there is something that right now excites the three: the trajectory of Andoni Luis Aduriz. He is a wise person who knows of kitchen, of chemistry, of biology. He can suppose a revolution as that it was Adrià.

- Berasategui: Andoni is only and Hilario Arbelaitz also. The two have now two stars and any of the two might receive the third one.

- Subijana: And it is not necessary to forget the one who was at the beginning of all this, Luis Irizar.

- Arzak: Do you realize Pedro that our movement of new kitchen is on the point of being 30 years? We are contagious of that cultural effervescence that existed in the country and take it to the kitchen. We did not want to become rich, but amuse ourselves and to construct anything proper. This was our secret: there was the one who wanted to copy us but it failed because they were giving priority to the money.

- Subijana: We did not know what we wanted, beyond dignifying our office.

- Berasategui:Yo I remember that Alejandro was employed at the Inn with my parents and was escaping from me to your chats. Something was cooked and I wanted to take part in all that.

- And has it been worth while?

- Arzak: I continue without believing that all this has happened to me. I meet still like the lad who was living in the Miracruz big house with my mother.

- Subijana: There have been moments durísimos, economically and morally. But everything was worth while.

- Berasategui: I cannot do another thing any more than to cook. If above they recognize it after you: for what more is it possible to ask?

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BERASATEQUI, SUBIJANA, ARZAK