Our delighted post-meal group, chef David Lee and his wife Jennifer O'Brien, Lynda and Steven Latner, Annie Sibonney of Relish Tours, Steven Sokolowski, food show producer Henry Less, Chef Berasategui and myself.

Pidgeon from Araiz, a town in Navarre famous for the quality of wild pidgeon (much like Bresse for it's chicken), with a rosemary, black truffle cream. The pidgeon had an extraordinary flavour with a sublime texture.

Roasted red mullet with crystals of it's scales, white chocolate sauce, cream of seafood and tail of Iberian pork.

The signature dish of warm vegetable hearts salad, with seafood. Apparently 10 people work on the preparation of this one dish.

A pork broth with braised Iberian endive, and melt in your mouth "balls", one of pork tongue, pork cheek and cheese.

Fennel in 3 textures: ribbons, gelee and foam

raw oyster, lemon grass sauce, green apple and watercress puree.

At Martin Berasategui's eponymous resto in San Sebastian, one of the greatest fish/shell fish meals I have ever enjoyed. The dish below consisted of raw squid bathed in squid ink with a ravioli filled with a very rich reduction of squid ink that provided incredible burst of flavour!

The Galician Beef

Perhaps the best beef of Spain, where milk cattle, kept like pets, tag along on a rope with their owners and when finished their milking life after 9 to 22 years, are slaughtered for beef. This beef was especially selected forChef Berasategui and was served rare. It was extremely succulent and flavourful. From my personal experience, it was better than Argentine and great Canadian beef, and at least as good as or even better than the best of American U.S. prime beef.

Cod kokotxa, the gelatinous muscle of the lower jaw, a Basque tradition, slow poached in olive oil with garlic, to bring out the gelatin, and tossed with pristinely fresh mussels.

3 Star Chef Martin Berasategui beginning to prepare our first course.

Chef David Lee at Gaztelubide

Chef David Lee and 3 Star Chef Martin Berasategui at the market, checking out fish for lunch at Gaztelubide, the pre-eminent gastronomic society in San Sebastian

JOSH'S FOOD TRAVELS IN SPAIN

My first night we went for a "tapas crawl" with one of the great food critics of spain, Peio Garcia Amiano, who flew in from Madrid to be with our group of 8. Only made it through 4 locations.....I was STUFFED!!!

The next day we had an enormous lunch created by one of Spain's greatest chefs, Martin Berasategui (for our group!!) at a private 65 year old gourmet society where he is a member. It is an open kitchen plus a small dining room because members only cook for members fortunately he had a handful of members who helped. These gourmet societies are a long time tradition in San Sebastion. Lunch was rustic, dinner also by Berasategui, promises to be sophisticated!