Arzak's heartfelt innovation key to two decades of success

There is nothing unusual about the US press praising Basque cuisine. The latest publication to do so is The Washington Post, in an article entitled ''Gastronomer: A Spanish restaurant where technology serves up deliciousness'' which takes a look at San Sebastian''s 3-Michelin Star restaurant Arzak.

This time, however, the paper does not simply moon over the delectableness of Arzak''s cooking, but ponders whether the key to the restaurant''s success is that it refuses to get carried away by the modernist cooking movement, but sticks firmly to its roots, even as it experiments and innovates.

This year, Ferran Adriá''s El Bulli restaurant (based in Barcelona province) will close permanently. As well as experiencing a decline in trade - as most establishments will have done lately - it was clear from statements made to press that Adriá was struggling to keep up with the pace.

Was it the pace, one may ask, of a gastronomic revolution focused on what the Post describes as, "technology over taste, method over result"?

"You didn''t have to like the food," says the paper, "as long as you knew that it was something the world had never seen before."

But, it ponders in an interesting play on words: "Did the revolution eat itself?"

In 2010, El Bulli was knocked off the top spot of Restaurant magazine''s list of the 50 best restaurants in the world. It was replaced by Copenhagen''s Noma, a decision with which many, including Arzak himself, strongly disagreed.

Was it the sign of a shift in gastronomic trends? Noma chef René Rezepi is undeniably pioneering (to create world-leading cuisine in a country like Denmark, arguably one would have to be) but the key to his cooking is that it offers an "innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods".

This may sound groundbreaking, though even as The Washington Post journalist is shown the Arzaks'' "laboratory" where Igor Zalakain experiments with rice and local ingredients to create something new inspired by a Vietnamese dish, he reflects that Arzak - and his chef daughter Elena - "have managed what most modernist cooks struggle to do: combine modern technology and classic cooking".

Technology is used, but to "make the food possible" and not as the central showcase of a dish. The central aim of the food is "the same as it has always been: to satisfy".

And that is how Juan Mari Arzak has worked since 1989: by neither adhering steadfastly to tradition nor being a slave to modernism, but "by being himself: proudly Basque... emotional more than technical".