La Nuez - Pamplona
If you are looking for fine dining in a Spanish restaurant in Pamplona, then look no further than La Nuez, or The Nut. This restaurant prides itself on precision cooking of classic dishes but with a Modernist twist.
The Restaurant
This Spanish restaurant is located in the city of Pamplona, close to some of the cities most famous parks and a few streets away from the bull fighting ring. La Nuez is the restaurant to visit if you want to experience how the people from the upper classes in Spain and France from the 19th Century ate. La Nuez's food is not only cooked using traditional recipes from both Spain and France, but is also cooked using classic cooking techniques dating from this period.
The restaurant has been designed in a Minimalist style as the dining room composes of antique-Modernist style furniture. The overall colour scheme is a chic black and white. This Minimalist style helps the restaurant achieve its aim of getting rid of the frill surrounding fine dining, and making sure that the food is the focus of the restaurant experience.
The Menu
Julio Flames, the owner and head chef of La Nuez has defined and defended his restaurant's spirit as a return to the fine cuisine of ages past. As such, Julio Flames has cut himself off from contemporary styles of cooking, focusing his attention instead on the lost techniques from the generations working in the 19th Century; the roots of 'haute cuisine'.
In this philosophy, Julio Flames is recreating the influence of Georges-Auguste Escoffier, a French chef from the 19th Century who was a big player in the modernisation of French cuisine and gastronomy. This man helped liberate French fine dining from a restricted and bigoted style of cooking. Georges-Auguste Escoffier got rid of the frills and pointless elements of cooking, helping to make it simpler and more precise.
La Nuez shamelessly strive to copy the influence of this great French chef, by recreating his style of cooking in Spanish contemporary society. Furthermore, the restaurant prides itself on the promotion of this formally little-known chef via their cooking and the restaurant.
Emphasis is given to the quality and retention of the flavour in the dishes served at this Spanish restaurant. The key to achieving this is though the use of quality ingredients in the production of the dishes as well as ensuring that these products are as fresh as possible and naturally grown.
Due to this focus on the French chef, Georges-Auguste Escoffier, the menu contains a few items from French cuisine, which sit alongside some of the more traditional Spanish recipes. The majority of the French dishes can be found in the pudding section of the menu and include items such as 'Milhojas clásico a la vainilla' (Classic Vanilla Mille-Feuilles) and 'Soufflé de fruta de la pasión' (Passion fruit soufflé).
La Nuez restaurant offers an 'à la carte' menu all year round, but during the summer months they also provide a set menu, or the 'Menú de Verano' which contains seasonal items which do not normally appear on the main menu. Therefore if you want more choice, the best time to visit Salamanca to eat at La Nuez is during the summer.
Some of the dishes from the main menu at La Nuez which must be highlighted include 'Pichón asado al horno, jugo sabroso de asado al vinagre de Jerez' which is oven-roasted squab (baby pigeon) which is served with Jerez style vinagre, 'Cordero de Navarra al pimiento de espelette' which is Navarre style lamb with espelette pepper (a spicy hot pepper grown in Espelette in the South of France), and 'Hígado de ternera en persillade, copos de patata nueva' which is liver in a parsley and garlic sauce served with new potato flakes.
