What a pleasure to find a restaurant so utterly concentrated on making simply-delicious food from the freshest possible, ultra-local ingredients and trusting that it will be beautiful, without any flourishes! In this age of tweezer-food, micro-flowers, sauce dots and Instagram-able plates, it’s like dining in a monastery! And here, the monks dine very well!
Located near the Halles of St-Jean-de-Luz, Pluviôse is tiny, with just 12 seats. The room is comfortable but nondescript, somewhere between a cozy cafe and a food and wine storeroom, with crates and cases stacked in every available corner. The chef, an Australian who relocated to the Pays-Basque more than 10 years ago, is also the waiter, the sommelier, the dishwasher, literally every job in the house. So don’t expect the fancy bells and whistles that are often found in restaurants that set the culinary bar this high.
The food here is really the point, and it is excellent. Everything is house-made, including the bread, butter, house cheese, vinegar and more. All ingredients are sourced hyper-locally, (the seafood and fish comes from a fisherman whose boat is 200 m from the restaurant). The bread is baked just before service so that it arrives with your first course still steaming from the oven (and is some of the best bread I have had in the region). A yogurt ice cream, part of the dessert, was churned at the last minute and never went in a freezer.
Our 7-course lunch included a number of dishes that don’t sound unusual but surprised with their simplicity of presentation and explosive flavors: Butternut squash, grilled and served with house-made fresh cheese and pumpkin seed-parsley-garlic vinaigrette; tortilla espagnol, the classic egg and potato pie, here with onion bits that had been roasted in the wood oven until crispy and aromatic; sashimi of grondin gris (an underappreciated fish that, served raw, was toothy, saline and wonderful) with daikon radish and piment d’Espelette oil; grilled collar of the same fish with olive oil, sea salt and house vinegar; leeks cooked “en papillote” very slowly on the wood grill, topped with diced Meyer lemon (and perhaps my favorite dish of the entire meal); merlu cooked on the braise with sauce pil-pil and a salad of cabbage and sunflower seeds (merlu, a flaky white fish, is THE fish of the Basque countries, often cooked “pil-pil”, in which the gelatinous fish juices are emulsified with garlic and olive oil); yogurt ice-cream, with local yuzu confiture. Wow!
The thing is, every dish was excellent. The service was informal but well timed. It would be difficult to find fault with any element of our meal.
The wine list is chock full of natural and organic wines at very generous prices. A bottle of winemaker Thierry Puzelat’s excellent Clos de Tue-Boeuf “Le Brin de Chèvre”, a natural white from the Touraine region, was only 45 euros. And the 2nd bottle we took for home was only 25!
Pluviôse
Address: 3, Rue du 17 Pluviôse, 64500 Saint-Jean-de-Luz
Tel: (011 33) 06 67 41 78 07
Reservations: very strongly advised as the restaurant only has 12 seats. No website, reservations by phone.