Baratxuri, Bury & Basque

Regardless of faith, denomination or interest, the indeterminate period between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve when it’s difficult to work out which day of the week it is, leaves many of us with not much to do and too much time to do it in.

Listening to George Winston’s ‘December’, a secular Yuletide classic, while sipping something red and pricey in the gloaming of a fading afternoon is one way. This sparse, brooding, solo piano meditation on the death of the year and, well - death - is certainly good for one such day but what of the others?

Holiday companies understand this only too well and so pepper the screens of commercial television with temptations to book your summer holiday early. Jump-cut footage of squealing toddlers and young, thin, smug parents splashing around in elaborate water parks with the occasional indulgent grandparent looking on, attempt to permeate the subconscious, and encourage folk to load up the credit card.

The whole shebang sounds like a rarified version of hell and I consider myself fortunate to be shot of this nonsense for now. But the media bombardment does prick the subconscious into thinking about where one might go next year. For me, somewhere near the top of that list, is always North West Spain.

It has many similarities with North West England. It rains quite a lot and the locals don’t care too much what the rest of the world thinks of them. It also has rolling hills leading to spectacular mountains and so the roads are peerless for motorcycling. But best of all, the food in the Basque, Cantabria, Asturias, Castile/León and Burgos regions - at any level - is as good as the continent can offer. From market stall bars where locals stop on their way home for a glass of something with a bit of Jamon Iberica, to three Michelin stars and everything in between, multiple visits have shown it to be consistently excellent at relatively reasonable price points.

Similarly, the recent edition of Harden’s Restaurant Guide suggests that - outside of London and the South East - North West England is the best region of the country to eat out in and I for one can only say: “What took you so long?” The Lake District and (whisper it quietly) North Yorkshire have been fabulous food-wise for nearly two decades and these positive influences have now permeated the entire region.

It’s 28th December and a 0-2 defeat to Manchester United to look forward to later leaving the afternoon free to seek out a late lunch. Ramsbottom is only twelve miles away and features not one but two celebrated Northern Spanish restaurants. Levantar specialises in Pinxtos, various delicious little snacky things you can have with a beer and the principal reason why I’ve never come across a really pissed Spaniard. The other is Baratxuri, unpronounceable and clearly formed from the hand I tend to draw at Scrabble, but proves to be a distant relative of its Iberian cousins, plonked on the outskirts of Bury.

So at the distinctly Iberian lunch hour of four o’clock in the afternoon, we trundle down the hill past a Dark Satanic looking factory on the right, and dump the car. Through darkening, dank streets the fug of welcome at Baratxuri is instant and we’re shown to a rough-hewn table in the side room. Dinky glasses of Alhambra draught beer are swiftly served as we study the menu.

A young but supremely confident waitress guides us through the menu and steers us to what she knows is good while indulging us on the staples that take us back to last October and our last visit to the area. Chorizo, poached in the gloriously named Altonfonzein cider was always going to be brilliant and it was. As was the authentic, thick-crusted, home-baked bread that we mopped up every last drop with. Berenjenas Fritas (Alhambra battered aubergines drizzled in Honey) were a cardiologist’s worst nightmare: heart-stoppingly good on every level.

Gambas al Brasa (shell-on prawns cooked over embers with Manzanilla) tasted like they’d come straight from the boat and if you’re into the Alpha Male thing of eating with your fingers with gutsy gusto, you’ll love them. If you’re a bit of a Tidy Queen like me and even eat pizza with a knife & fork, you’ll probably go for them once anyway but not a second time.  We’re not savages, after all…

But the piece de resistance is the Asado beef. Sold by weight, just two between 600g and 750g are presented. The larger one is the best part of sixty-quid and the one we go for as Joe Botham - one of the proprietors - suggests the marbling pattern of the fat will make it cook slightly better. It comes from a specific farm in Asturias, where the animals live a full, outdoor, active life as part of dairy herd before slaughter. Joe imports the sides as a whole and completes the butchering himself. The meat is proper and dignified. Dark, muscly, with a smoky agedness to it that regular ‘prime cuts’ just don’t have, and point to the thirteen years the beast has spent grazing the hillside. Indeed, the filet - so beloved of Berni Inn aficionados and their Gaucho Grill flocking descendants - doesn’t really flick the switch of the Asturians, being a bit anaemic by comparison.

We plunged our hand back into the Scrabble bag with the wines. First up was a Zudugarai Txakoli from Getaria. Available by the glass, it has a lovely applely tang and latent effervescence to the point you might mistake it for cider. We followed up with a white Rioja made with Viura grape. This one a bit less distinctive than the first but spot on with the big prawns. Given the excellent policy of selling a wide range of interesting wines by the glass, we were looking forward to a Rioja Reserva to go with the beef until two very friendly couples at the next table - Burnley and Man U fans who lived nearby - and the waitress urged us to go for the Entre Suelos, a weapons-grade Tempranillo from León and exclusive to Baraxturi and Levanter. What a bottle: worth the visit alone when paired with the beef and further evidence that the French concept of terroir, that wine and food work together best when produced from the same earth is perhaps not the pretentious, gallic twaddle it might appear at first glance.

We round things off with some utterly superfluous La Viña Torta de Queso (Burnt baked cheesecake with Pedro Ximenez sherry soaked raisins that was nevertheless fabulous and wickedly alcoholic.

The early evening ends with yet another drink at another bar with our new found friends. Phone numbers are swopped and plans to meet up again made, before taking a cab to Turf Moor. The less said about the rest of the evening the better but, chock full of good food and drink, nothing else matters much.

The next day and during the motorway slog towards the over-crowded, violent and parodically expensive south-east; the contrast with a December Saturday afternoon in Ramsbottom could not be sharper.

‘Linner’ for two with a ton of high-class booze was £190 including a well-deserved tip. A bit of restraint with fewer starters but with the beef and the excellent red wine would reduce this to about £140.

Baratxuri, 1 Smithy Street, Ramsbottom, Bury BL0 9AT, 01706 551530, www.baratxuri.co.uk

Postscript

A month later and it’s five-thirty in the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd January 2020, a date that will no doubt resonate through the ages for Burnley supporters. I’m sitting with my dining companion - a burly Man U fan - in the excellent ‘Wood Manchester’ restaurant.

“I take it we are ordering from the ‘Pre-Theatre Menu’ darling, given the antics of your f***ing team at Turf Moor”, I intone suavely.

Four-and-a-half hours later, the ghosts of twenty two-fixtures and fifty-eight years have been well and truly exorcised. Diagonally opposite to where I’m sitting, the roar from the Clarets supporters fills the void left by what few home supporters remain. The exodus started on sixty-minutes and not the eighty-five reported by the slavish broadsheets, obsessed with the top-six clubs and oblivious to the achievements of the others.

To borrow a favourite phrase of the Great Man: “It was an odd one”…

I’m sitting where I am as I’ve been loaned four premium Old Trafford season tickets for the match. Each has its own tasteful grey leather wallet whose buttery smoothness and gilt crest gives some indication to what these things must cost. They also contain a discrete business card explaining the required etiquette: opposing team colours may not be worn openly and outward displays of support for visitors are verboten.

And so, after supping incognito amongst a bunch of Mancs who have clearly done very well for themselves, I sit emotionless as the drama unfolds from one of the best vantage points in the house. Like being the most sober person in the room at a free tasting of every vintage of Chateau Musar (never going to happen…), I can sense history being made but actually can’t feel it.

The Germans need an upgrade to the phrase: schadenfreude as ‘taking pleasure from another’s misfortune does not really do this spectacle justice. It’s borderline hilarious to see this group of supporters - for whom success is assumed a perennial, God-given right - come to terms with the grim reality that the half-billion pounds of ‘talent’ laid before them (albeit without Marcus Rashford) is no match for a gritty, well-drilled squad looking to complete a job, unfinished in the previous two encounters here.

This and future issues of STWHA will contain more insightful and knowledgeable insights into this historic match than I can contribute, so I’ll leave it there. I’m just thrilled to have been there although, in a way, I wasn’t.