The meal we had the day we got engaged has stayed with me. It was a lunch at Asador Astillero in Getaria, a professional, business-like affair frequented by business-like Basques, at the very end of a business-like pier. I always enjoy places like that – ones that don’t romanticise what’s implicitly romantic. I like clean, plain tables, sturdy chairs – nothing perfunctory, of course, but nothing indulgent either. Restaurants in Milan often have this quality. So do some in Genoa and the Basque Country.
That morning we had made a pilgrimage to the Balenciaga museum in Getaria, Cristobal Balenciaga’s hometown. Afterwards, we followed various people’s directions and found ourselves the beneficiaries of the last table at Asador Astillero. After a bit of handholding, as we struggled with the names of dishes in Basque, we landed on percebes – goose barnacles – and rodaballo – a huge turbot cooked over fruit wood and served dripping in olive oil and fried garlic. These are two of the most famous dishes of the lands around the Bay of Biscay. We drank txakoli, which is from Getaria. Later that day, after a long and beautiful descent into Deba, we were again fate-kissed. We got a hotel room in town. We dropped our things, ate cheese and bread and drank local cider. We went to the beach and hopped around, finding shells. And then we got engaged.
