Boise, Idaho – There are certain ethnic groups I’ve grown quite fond of through my travels, and one of those is the Basques. You would too if you watched the Tour de France race through the French Pyrenees.
The Basques are rabid cycling fans. Picture New Yorkers in Yankee pinstripes and put them in orange Lycra and you have the Basques in July. They pour onto the race routes across the border and party, sing, chant and party some more.
I remember one time snaking skyward up one of the endless mountain stages to the finish line, seemingly just this side of the moon. I was hot. I was burned out. I was hungry. Stuck in traffic, waiting for the orange wave of Basques to part, a smiling man in his 20s and wearing the orange jersey of the Basques’ Euskaltel-Euskadi racing team walked to my car and handed me an ice-cold San Miguel beer and a leg of lamb.
I couldn’t accept them, of course, but the thought more than counted. It stayed with me until I could delve more into the culture and I finally did, far from the craggy mountains of the Pyrenees and the dusty streets of Pamplona.
Boise, Idaho.
Yes, Boise is not only home to the best little football team in the country, Boise State, but it’s also home to the world’s largest Basque population outside northern Spain. Between 10,000 and 13,000 Basques live in Boise’s Treaure Valley, and during a recent trip I experienced the same hospitality, pride and, most of all, food, I experienced in France without the traffic or prima donna cyclists.
The Basques are spread throughout Boise but they congregate downtown on Grove Street between Sixth Street and Capitol Boulevard, a strip simply referred to as Basque Block. It’s lined with a Basque restaurant, a Basque bar, a Basque market, a Basque museum, a Basque cultural center and the red, green and white Basque flags.
I was Basquin’ in Boise.
I had dinner at the Basque restaurant called Leku Ona. It wasn’t my first Basque meal. I lived in Nevada for 10 years, and Reno also has a large Basque population. But its Basque restaurant was a huge, rough-and-tumble joint with all the warmth and serenity of an auto mechanic’s shop.
Leku Ona (“Good Place” in Basque) is quite elegant. Brightly lit with framed maps of Old Europe on the walls, Leku Ona gives you the spectrum of Basque cuisine with a large dollop of class. Basque food translates well in the U.S. as it appeases even the dulled American couch potato. It specializes in fish, soup, lamb and beans. If you find an American who doesn’t like any of the above that person survives on plankton.
Sure, they serve dishes that grip at the gut such as porru pastela, which is creamy leek pie, and tripekiak, the Basque term for tripe squares. Tripe is the American term for stomach lining.
But there’s halibut koxkera erara, halibut in whole clams in a white wine sauce; txarri txuletak, pork chops marinated in white wine, garlic and paprika; and ziazerbaz betetako piperrak, Basque red Piquillo peppers filled with spinach and bay shrimp.
As you can see the Basque language resembles Spanish about as much as English does medieval Bulgarian, which tells you something about their fierce independence movement. I didn’t talk politics on Basque Block. Boise’s Basques are more into eating and drinking.
I started with urdaiazpikoa, traditional Spanish Serrano ham and a Basque delicacy. It was a circular pile of thin meat that tasted much like prosciutto without the fat for $9.75. For $23.95 I then had the arkume txuletatxoak, charbroiled lamb chops in olive and garlic and a 75 score in Scrabble.
I chased it with a glass of Ramon Bilbao Rioja, a rich, hearty traditional Basque wine for $5.50 and a conversation with the head chef. Ramon Barquin, 48, was born in Boise and returned to Spain with his parents when he was 4. Yes, he did run with the bulls of Pamplona but also studied in Bayonne, France’s Basque stronghold, and returned to Boise in 1993.
He said Basques immigrated to Boise to work the sheep farms in the late 1800s, and more came during the Spanish Civil War in 1935. Boise has tried to preserve the culture through festivals and even a preschool that teaches children the Basque language.
My cultural indoctrination should have stopped with learning Basque for thank you (ezkerrik asko). Barquin talked me into visiting the restaurant bar for a traditional Basque drink called a kalimotxo. It sounds exotic. It isn’t. Its cheap wine mixed with Coca- Cola. It’s very popular to drink before running with the bulls, something I found odd since after one I could barely walk across the street.
I still felt the lump in my stomach the next day when I went to Gernika, the Basque bar that serves the best red- bean soup you’ll ever have and another Basque standard: the chorizo sandwich.
There weren’t any bulls and there weren’t any cyclists. However, those Rocky Mountains surrounding Boise started looking curiously like the Pyrenees.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road. He can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
