Piment d'Espelette, raw-milk Ossau-Iraty, red Irouléguy: a portrait of the producers who bring the house table to life.
The table at Pikassaria doesn't begin in the kitchen, but out on the roads of the inland Pays Basque, among the men and women who truly shape the flavour of this place. We call them our Sunday producers — not because they only work that one day, but because it's often at the Sunday market that we cross paths, basket in hand.
There's the piment d'Espelette, dried in strings along the house fronts, which lifts a dish without ever burning it. The raw ewe's-milk Ossau-Iraty, aged in the cellar, whose paste tells of the grass on the high summer pastures. And Irouléguy, that wine of steep hillsides, deep red or bright rosé, one of the most secret in all of France.
Working with them means embracing the rhythm of the seasons and of small quantities. No year is ever quite the same as the last; and that's precisely what we love. So the house menu changes with each new delivery — short and easy to read, faithful to what the land gives at the very moment you are here.
The rest is simply care: cook just enough, season lightly, let the ingredient say what it has to say. It's our way of letting you taste this land — no speeches, just what's on the plate.