Bascook - Restaurante en Bilbao — Restaurant in Bilbao

This restaurant was recommended to us by various people from Bilabo, so we had to try it. It labels itself as a modern Basque fusion restaurant, which is great. Unfortunately, it was a big flop. Setting aside the service which was very friendly and welcoming, the food was a miss.

We ordered 4 dishes, but only made it to the second before we cancelled the rest. The salmon tartare was a explosion of flavour but not the kind of explosion you want. The flavours simply did not work together and it felt like one big warm mushy mess. Then we had the squid rice with pork and prawns. It was, along with a Subway sandwich I had in Athens in 2008, the saltiest thing i’ve ever eaten. The pork bits were undetectable and the prawns had a strong saffron taste and were either overcooked or not fresh.

This is when we asked to cancel the rest of our order. The waiters weren’t really curious as to why, which seemed odd. My guess is: this used to be a great place but got overrun by tourists and the chef lowered his standards. It’s trying too hard to be gastronomique and failing, in my opinion. Just like a pimped Peugeot trying to be a BMW. But it’s still a Peugeot.

Or maybe it was just an...

We had the tasting menu Gatz. My wife and I are foodies, we do appreciate the experience but offering three dishes with fish accompanied by mushrooms, in one tasting menu is a bit much.

The mushroom were not good in any of the three dishes, it was the same kind just cooked in a different way, some of them were really really bitter and none of the three pairings unfortunately worked out in regard to flavours.

The tartare was really good but the rib eye was extra rare, a bit hard to eat if someone is not used to rare meat, a bit chewy as well. I think a little bit more cooking and it would have been much better. We did not get asked how we wanted it cooked.

The amount of the dishes in the tasting menu was good, you definitely leave with a full stomach and we do appreciate that.

There is the need to explore a bit more the combination of flavours, the gatz menu unfortunately did not have good flavours overall, the individual pieces were tasty, but the combinations not good.

Service was good, fast and simple, they give you the time for tasting and chatting and enjoying...

There are many options in a culinary city like Bilbao, this should not be one of them. Let’s start with a positive: the decor is nice and the female waitress tried to compensate for her colleagues, but that is really where the good things come to an end… The most obvious flaw is the service: we were rushed through dinner, received our aperitif cocktails during our main course and cutlery was thrown on our table. When trying to attend the waiter to the fast tempo, we received a rude response trying to justify their attitude saying they were understaffed. That statement holds true but is in no way a problem a customer (paying a significant amount of money for a menu) should solve or suffer from. The food was not better than the service. Too much sauce, dry meat and a tasteless, heavy dessert. The paper placemats belong in a fast food chain and even has a review printed on it, almost screaming insecurity (and rightly so) about their food. I would conclude the restaurant has a bad price-quality ratio, but that would be lying. It’s just plain bad. Do...