Lurra

It’s difficult to imagine anything more disgraceful than admitting you haven’t been to San Sebastian. While Andalucía remains the good honest choice for any salt-of-the-earth Englishman, it’s this small coastal city in the Basque Country that has become the bigger and more fashionable draw for anyone interested in eating.

Apparently, the city and its surrounds boasts the greatest number of Michelin stars per square kilometre in the world, with the exception of Kyoto. A bit ironic, then, that the simplicity of Basque cuisine is what the owners of Lurra, Melody Adams and Nemanja Borjanovic, cite as its primary appeal.

It was a stay in San Sebastian that originally inspired them to open a tapas restaurant called Donastia in Marylebone in 2012. The name is taken from the city’s official title and the place seats around 40 people. It was an instant success.

As a result, the couple opened a second restaurant, Lurra, on the opposite side of the street three years later. With the space for larger grills in the kitchen, the ambition was to emulate the type of Basque cooking executed almost exclusively over fire.

Arrive at Lurra in the mood for terracotta bowls of chorizo rounds and paella, and you will be disappointed. Jugs of sangria woozy with cheap plonk and fruit salad are also absent. Instead, the business-end of the menu is about showstopping hunks of meat big and brave enough to spend quality time above scorching charcoal. This is evident on arrival, when you’ll pass cabinets decked with generous slabs of dry-aged beef and whole turbot on the way to your table.

What’s also noticeable is the modern, designer feel of the restaurant. The bright, airy, minimalist aesthetic is one traditionally associated with Scandinavia rather than Spain. Warm, sympathetic lighting and judicious wooden cladding on the walls prevent it from feeling stark or austere. There are plenty of clean, striking lines and pale wooden chairs slide out from under white marble tabletops.

While Lurra eschews the hallmarks of the cliched Spanish restaurant in its design, not everything traditional has been abandoned in the kitchen. Croquetas shall be ordered whenever they are offered, and the jamon variety here are rich without clag. Guernica peppers look and cook much like padrons but are slightly larger and the texture is less slushy, perhaps because of their size.

Our starters are rounded off with wedges of lightly grilled sourdough served with halved beef bones; the wobbly marrow gets scooped out and thickly spread. It’s salty, meaty and savoury, and represents the first edible hint of the Henry VIII-endorsed banquet available as the main course.

The list of red wines accelerates from 0-£60 in four bottles and is at £100 before the second page has concluded. Marylebone is, of course, an expensive area of an expensive city but the owners’ previous lives in finance may just possibly exert an influence on their price sensitivities. Fortunately, Melody’s past also includes a wine import business, so it’s a high-quality selection as well as a pricey one. Various styles of Spanish wine are covered and a ‘Cellar List’ section includes older vintages of famous names, including Muga, Numanthia, Vega Sicilia and Pingus. If you have deep pockets or a desire to experience insolvency, dive in. Even better news is that a lovely 2015 Priorat is on the list at £50 and seems like relatively good value; it’s a shame most restaurants rarely offer wines of more than three or four years of age, given the ability of time to improve, meld and soften.

The wine is a great match with the 1.5kg bone-in steak we order between four. Our waiter brings it to the table before it’s cooked so we can feel special and manly about the Flinstonian piece of meat on the way. Lurra specialises in Galician blond beef, which is from older cows that have been put out to pasture. The age and lifestyle of the animals add marbling and flavour, as well as a golden fat that imparts yet more richness. Dry-aging then helps tenderise the meat. When a vast plate groaning under the weight of the bone and thick tranches of steak subsequently arrives, it’s apparent that the cooking matches the quality of the meat; the centre of the steak is a blackcurrant purple, encased in a thin, charred crust.

The sides provide an array of colours and contrasting flavours to complement the beef. A tomato salad, usually of Raf or Feo de Tudela; a bowl of slow-cooked and dressed courgette slices; artichokes with romesco; chips double-fried in olive oil, dusted with smoked paprika and accompanied by aioli.

Space between tables on the first floor of the restaurant is generous, helping to make this a venue for long, languid, relaxed evenings with good company. The evenings must be extended further to include Lurra’s famous Burnt Basque cheesecake, a slice of which arrives collapsing as the unset middle slumps all over the plate like warm brie. It’s light, gloriously creamy and not too sweet. Together with a glass of Jurancon, every mouthful creates one of those eyes-closed, transcendental moments of pleasure.

All of this together doesn’t come cheap and the service can be patchy, occasionally giving the impression of a team spread too thinly, which could be the case given the current staffing challenges in the hospitality industry. But we’ve already made a return visit for suckling pig, and there will be more for turbot, and lamb, and steak again.

Lurra lives up to the tenets of Basque cuisine identified by its owners, serving high-quality ingredients cooked simply but expertly. It feels like a fitting tribute to the region and to San Sebastian. I really must go one day.

*Photo of magical cheesecake used with Lurra's permission