Q&A: MELODY ADAMS & NEMANJA BORJANOVIC

The co-owners of Lurra and Donostia on Basque cuisine, hard cider and the wild response to the meat of old dairy cows

Interview: Ellie Costigan

Images: Orlando Gili

Q: How did you come to open a Basque restaurant in Marylebone?

Nemanja: Mel and I were working in finance and banking before opening the restaurant. We have always been foodies – ones who were prepared to drop everything and dive deep into the restaurant world. One of the biggest regrets we have is not doing the jump sooner. When you’re working in the City, you’re pretty much there because you need to pay the bills. It was a lifestyle shift – we wanted to work in food, we had a passion for it. It doesn’t feel so much like work. Melody: It was discovering San Sebastián that changed everything.

I was unsuccessfully importing wine at the time and Nemanja and I were driving to a winery to get a new vintage. It was a long drive, so we thought we’d stop over in this small town that’s known for its gastronomy. We stayed in San Sebastián for one night and were shocked that, despite there being such a massive food scene in London – particularly Spanish – there was this Basque gem being overlooked. It’s very different to traditional Spanish cuisine. We started going back to San Sebastián and the surrounding regions more and more, and eventually decided that somebody should do this kind of thing in London. And it should be us.

Q: What would you say characterises Basque cuisine?

Nemanja: Few ingredients, all about sourcing, no faffing around on the plate. You hear that a lot – “We’re all about sourcing good ingredients” – but nowhere is it truer than in the Basque Country. Many are oneingredient dishes: the turbot, the steak, the peppers. No embellishment, no nothing. You can imagine how good it’s got to be. That’s one of the key characteristics of Basque cuisine and that’s what really appealed to us; the simplicity.

Q: The region’s also known for a particular wine: txakoli. What’s special about it?

Nemanja: Txakoli is only produced in a couple of regions of the Basque Country – mainly in the hills of Getaria, which is a small fishing village, famous for its turbot. The wine is unique because it has a natural spritz: you pour it into a beaker from a height, which is quite showy, to aerate it and start the fizz. You’re supposed to pour just a little bit and neck it. It’s great because it’s a low-alcohol wine, only 10 to 10.5 per cent, which these days is quite hard to find. It has this amazing lightness. It has a taste of the sea. The minerality in it is something special. It pairs well with the turbot, which we also do in Lurra. It’s a match made in heaven.

Q: The Basques are famed for their cider making – tell us about that.

Nemanja: They make the scrumpystyle, natural cloudy cider – not carbonated or sweet, more on the sour side. It’s called ‘hard cider’. The guys who do it well use 100 per cent Basque apples. Again, it’s poured from a height to get a little bit of fizz. The tradition of the cider houses is, the farmers would bring their meat and exchange it for cider. Over time, they ended up cooking the meat in the cider house and drinking the cider there. It’s now an established gastronomic tradition, where you go to the cider house and you have the steak, you have the cod, the Basquestyle chorizo – and you get pissed on the apple cider. It’s very good.

Q: As good ingredients are so clearly integral, was it difficult to find the right suppliers?

Melody: We didn’t have a clue at first. The first time we went, there was a UK government travel warning because of the local terrorist group Eta, which was still semi-active. You didn’t see many foreign tourists, other than a few surfers. We started talking to the restaurants that we liked, and back then, they were very approachable. One couple in particular said: “Next time you come to San Sebastián we’ll show you around.” They introduced us to one of their txakoli suppliers, who we still work with today – Elizabeth, the same lady supplying the same txakoli since we opened – their Cantabrian anchovies supplier, their beef supplier, who we now import beef from for various restaurants as well as our own. It was very open.

Nemanja: Our chefs went and did work experience at Elkano, which back then was just a popular seaside restaurant –now it’s become the place you can’t visit San Sebastián without going to. I asked if our chefs could come for two weeks and learn how to do the turbot and the sauce and it was like: “Yeah, sure. Tell them to knock on the door when they’re here and speak to so and so.” Now it’s all become very Michelin, you have to do a six-month stage. It was fantastic for our chefs. You think to cook turbot you just put it on the grill; they came back and said: “So, there are 13 steps to cook turbot the Basque way. This is how you debone it, this is how you make the secret sauce, this is how you introduce it.” They also went to La Viña, which is famous for its burnt Basque cheesecake. It’s very hard to replicate what they do there, but we give it a good go.

Q: How important is it to you that you stay true to traditional Basque recipes and techniques?

Nemanja: We do as much as we can. When we were opening Donostia,

Food Philosophy

Hagen Maryleone

Tim Schroeder, owner of Hagen, on the true meaning of hygge, the art of coffee making, and the importance of interaction

Interview: Viel Richardson we were very keen to do the pintxos thing, but we had to adapt that to the market here. There, it’s all up on the bar, with the cocktail sticks: you eat them, then take your sticks and pay for however many you’ve taken. We kind of thought if we did that here people would be thinking, how long has that been out there? And it might be perceived as canapes. So, we started doing pintxos made to order, fresh, rather than standing on the bar. We’ve adapted things slightly. We also source what we can from the UK. Our turbot is always wild from Cornwall, veg comes from the UK, predominantly. espresso bar people and Hagen was born out of what it means to me. In Denmark you have the notion of a ‘kaffe pause’, and in many cultures, when you invite someone to grab a coffee there’s a social element involved. It’s rarely just about the caffeine hit. For me, a coffee bar needs to capture those two elements: you’re here for the coffee, but you’re also here to be with friends.

‘Hygge’ is a term you hear a lot, but often it’s a version that’s been packaged to make it easy to sell things. It’s presented as blankets, a fireplace, Nordicstyle furnishings. In Denmark, the meaning runs much deeper; it’s a term that encompasses the nurturing aspects of

Q: What made you open up a second restaurant, Lurra, just over the road from Donostia?

Nemanja: When we opened Donostia, we never really had any ambition to open another restaurant, but then a couple of things happened at the same time. Donostia was an instant success and very busy. We were turning a lot of people away, because the restaurant is so small – and then we discovered Galician blond meat. It comes from old dairy cows and we had never come across anything like it. We started doing the steak as a special, bringing in 20, 30 kilos, and whenever we had it on the menu togetherness. When I see my sister, I would say it’s hygge to see her. That’s the reason we put it on the wall here, even though it may be perceived as commercial. It’s the definition of the feeling we are trying to create.

Our layout is designed to create interaction between the team and the customers, but also between the customers themselves Rather than designing our shops to maximize the number of seats, we want to maximize human interaction.

We see making great coffee almost as an artform, so we want to showcase the skills that our team have. That’s why our bars are very open, with the baristas facing the customers as they make their drinks.

There are so many fantastic roasters, buyers and producers in the speciality coffee industry. Rather than recreating their jobs and then trying to persuade people that we’re better, we thought, why don’t we just collaborate with them? We work with Prologe from Denmark –one of the best roasters in the world and a favourite of René Redzepi, the owner of Noma –and Dark Arks from Shoreditch, who create our house espresso blend.

The way we choose the varieties we sell is based on the customer experience. For example, we want our house cappuccino to be chocolatey, nutty and smooth. At certain times of the year, those qualities will come from Brazil and at other times from other countries or regions. Our roasters can find the most amazing coffee in places that you would never know, so we trust their ability to source the best coffees for the experiences we want to create for our customers.

Another very important part of what Hagen stands for is our charitable work. We sell our own beans from the Himalayas. It is some of the first speciality coffee from Nepal and 100 per cent of the profit goes back to the farmers directly. We are giving them access to the premium coffee market; what we require from them is that all the processing equipment we’re setting up are sustainable, as we want carbon neutrality at source.

We have looked at other places, but Marylebone High Street feels right for us. The area still has a genuine village atmosphere. It feels like a place where you can create a proper sense of community and that makes us very excited to be here.

HAGEN MARYLEBONE

82 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW thehagenproject.com people were wowed by it. It wasn’t just: “Thank you, that was a very nice steak, see ya.” It was: “Here is my business card, when you’ve got it in again, call me.” We realised that nobody else was doing this Galician blond meat in any of the Spanish restaurants in London. But it was difficult to do it in Donostia: you’ve got a small plancha and when you’ve got three steaks on it, everything else is on hold. Then we saw The Portman Estate, our landlord, doing up this site. There’s a courtyard in the back, which is beautiful – and so rare. We thought, why don’t we do a Basque grill? The turbot, the steak, the suckling lamb –bigger dishes. We took a punt, and it paid off.

Q: Covid-19 had a huge impact on the hospitality industry. Has there been a lasting impact?

Melody: During the lockdowns we were operating an online shop and delivering food boxes, including working with charities to cook for the NHS. We’ve stopped doing that now, but our baked Basque cheesecake became hugely popular – it was an Instagram hit! So we’ve continued to do that: you can either order a whole cheesecake, which people like to do for birthdays, for example, or you can just pop in and pick up a slice to take away.

Lurra is open full time and we have all our classics back on the menu: the grilled turbot, the steak, as well as Basque specials like pil-pil cod cheeks. Donostia is back open, but still closed on a Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday lunchtimes – but we’re getting there. It’s just great having customers back in. After everything that’s happened, it’s so lovely to see a full, buzzy restaurant. We’re back doing what we love, which is serving customers face to face.

Q: Something that seems to be affecting the whole industry is staff shortages. Has that impacted you?

Melody: We still have our head chef, Charlie – my brother. We also have a lovely French girl, Justine, who has worked with us for five years and has now been head chef at Donostia for six months. But otherwise, we’ve had to build a new team. Arguably, though, it’s the strongest we’ve ever had. We’ve been through a lot together and the people who are with us now really want to be here, they really want to work. Although it’s harder to hire, people stay for longer. When they’re with you, and like working with you, they stay.

Q: Have you noticed any changes in the way people eat out, and their appreciation for restaurants?

Melody: When we reopened last year, it was like Christmas – people having these long, boozy lunches, because they just hadn’t been out for ages. While that’s settled down, lunchtimes are still much busier than they used to be. It’s more important than ever for people to take clients out and see them face to face, because they’re not having office meetings as much. The business lunch has become crucial to maintaining relationships. That’s really interesting – and a real plus for us!

LURRA

9 Seymour Place, W1H 5BA lurra.co.uk

DONOSTIA

10 Seymour Place, W1H 7ND donostia.co.uk

ANATOMY OF A DISH TORTELLI WITH WINTER GREENS & TRUFFLE BUTTER

Yohei Furuhashi, head chef at The Italian Greyhound, on a simple, seasonal pasta dish

In a nutshell

The beauty of this elegant vegetarian pasta dish is that it’s seasonal, yet it kind of lasts the whole year. It can be made with whatever you find at the market: from dark greens like cavolo nero and cime di rapa in winter to lighter coloured peas and agretti –sometimes called monk’s beard – in spring.

The inspiration

As I’ve explored Italian cookery over the past decade, this dish has been my go-to. I love its simplicity and honesty, and the fact that the dish is about as Italian as it gets. One of the most beautiful things about Italian cooking is how effortlessly they harness the seasons. It’s built into the culture. It’s just what’s good that week, lovingly enrobed in pasta – and that’s very much what we do at The Italian Greyhound. We’re about seasonal, rustic Italian simplicity.

The purpose

The idea is to use delicate pasta to carry cookeddown seasonal greens which are mixed with a little ricotta and parmesan to lighten and aerate it. As the dish is running on our menu from late winter through to early spring, I enrich the dish with a truffle butter for a bit of extra indulgence when it’s cold.

The technique

I make sure my pasta dough is made with 00 flour, and I always use the deepest orange egg yolks I can find. I lightly blanch the greens then chop them small. I like to slow cook greens to intensify the flavour, with a clove of crushed garlic, fennel seeds and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil. I use cicoria or cime di rapa if it’s in season, as it lends a bitterness and depth to the dish, reminding me of the colder climes of the north of Italy. If you want to intensify the flavours further, think of using ingredients such as radicchio and smoked pancetta.

The secret

Tuscan-style tortelli feels a little less formal and more interesting than ravioli. They’re a bit more durable and fun, and they’re easy to make once you get the hang of it. My brigade and I have some of our best conversations about life while making tortelli; it’s a break between the intensity of services. The best thing is that when you plate the dish, they sit nice and upright, and hold the sauce really well because it seeps into all the little handmade crevices of the pasta. When it comes to the filling ratio, the filling is very much about the greens – not the cheese!

THE ITALIAN GREYHOUND

62 Seymour Street, W1H 5BN theitaliangreyhound.co.uk