Joe Jaszewski / Idaho Statesman The baked codfish with asparagus and seasoned potatoes at Epi's, a Basque restaurant in Meridian.
Regional food should take you – or at least your taste buds – on a little culinary excursion, a bite by bite departure from the everyday. And even though I know Basque culture and food are hardly foreign to Idaho, I’d hoped that Epi’s Basque Restaurant would beam me, albeit briefly, to the Iberian Peninsula. Instead, it carried me only a few crisp croquetas beyond the Treasure Valley.
It’s not that Epi’s doesn’t deserve accolades. Never in my life have I been so warmly welcomed to a restaurant. From the moment we made reservations (under an assumed name) to our arrival at this quaint, little house on Meridian’s Main Street, Epi’s staff coddled us like newly found family – and that includes the delicious, citrusy Gateau Basque dessert ($7.50).
The menu was equally welcoming, with many of the entrees – like ink fish (tximinoiak), tongue (mingaina) and codfish (makailua) – sounding flavorfully different.
Right away the appetizers delivered that hoped-for Basque country experience. There were those salty, savory slices of grilled chorizo ($10.95) laid over a tart bed of roasted red pimentos, and the ham croquetas ($10.95) that seemed to defy the laws of physics. How does a golden, nearly shatteringly crisp little nugget contain such a lusciously creamy, nearly liquid interior? If there’d been more of those eyeball-sized orbs, I’d have binged my way into a croquetas stupor. The brick-red Basque bean soup was also richly flavorful (all entrees come with a generous supply of soup, salad, bread and side dishes).
The first bump in our little Basque vacation came with the second soup choice: a New England clam chowder with a cream-and-potatoes taste that instantly leapt the Atlantic. The salad – made of iceberg lettuce, julienned carrot and red cabbage – also seemed to bounce from a culture close to the Mediterranean to a nondescript location somewhere in middle America.
Joe Jaszewski / Idaho Statesman Epi's is in Meridian at 1115 N. Main Street.
A glimpse around the room reinforced that geographical pin-balling. Despite the black and white photos of Basque families lining the walls, Epi’s interior is singularly Early American, and customers seem to savor Diet Coke and Mountain Dew as often as the several varieties of Basque wine on offer. When the most exotic-sounding dish on the menu arrived – baby squid in squid ink ($24.95) – it was all shiny black and deliciously sinister looking, but rather timid in taste.
I’m not Basque and haven’t had the honor of visiting Basque country, but when I later thumb through one of my several Basque cookbooks for a similar ink fish recipe, I see garlic, bright green olive oil, and the spicy/sweet Basque piment d’Espelette pepper sprinkled generously through those ingredient lists. I tasted little of those flavors in Epi’s slightly sweet ink fish sauce.
The meatballs in tomato sauce ($14.95), like the ink fish, were enjoyable, yet had no notable regional character. So too the baked codfish ($21.95), the roast leg of lamb ($24.95), and garlic shrimp in butter sauce ($22.95). All were good, but all carried flavors I wouldn’t find unfamiliar assembled from the tattered pages of American classics like “The Joy of Cooking” or the “Fannie Farmer Cookbook.”
I realize that immigrant cuisine must, by necessity, adapt to the realities of a new geography, climate and culture, and that Idaho’s Basque residents have lived here long enough to rightfully argue that it’s my misplaced expectations rather than Epi’s food that should be critiqued here.
Epi’s, after all, cooks up a hybrid cuisine that obviously makes people happy (the restaurant is frequently packed and reservations are always a must). By that measure, Epi’s has clearly created a culinary home for itself – it’s just a home I suspect is planted much closer to Meridian, Idaho, than the Pyrenees of France and Spain.
Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/07/30/1284989/not-so-far-from-home.html#ixzz0v9yncPqQ
And here’s a recent article from the New York Times on the explosion of innovative cuisine being produced in Basque country.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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American Basque food is not the same as the Basque Food that one would find in northeastern Spain and Southwestern France. According to, I believe, Jane and Michael Stern (and I don’t know their source) the Basques traveled to the American west as chuck wagon cooks because they were known for their culinary abilities. The Basque cuisine of the American West draws more from that tradition than being a direct importation of “authentic” basque cuisine. I’ve been to Louis Basque in Reno, and I’ve been to Basque country. I can tell you that the aesthetic is the same (big, hearty, simple, family style) but the actual menu items are quite different. Louis Basque has cowboy beans, Spanish Basque has black beans with blood sausage.The baked cod at Epi’s sounds like an interpretation of “Bacalao al Pil Pil,” salt cod baked in olive oil.
I can’t wait to go to Epi’s.
Mike, I think you’re absolutely right. American Basque food is an adaptation that all immigrant cuisines make as they settle into a new land. The recent book “How Italian Food Conquered the World” chronicles that metamorphosis in Italian food and Basque food is no different. Coincidentally, several Basque chefs are coming to Boise next week for a week long Basque Cuisine Seminar that is all about the differences between modern Basque country cuisine and American Basque food. If you’re in the area, here’s some info on that seminar: http://bit.ly/jeGfoY