Like a simple tavern, they collected prizes in record time. Javi Rivero and Gorka Rico, trained in the university degree of the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) and barely thirty years old, started in mid-2018 with the opening of AMA, in the Old Town of Tolosa. Thus was born a tavern format in a place of about 12 square meters, with minimal kitchen, between two and four tables and a terrace. A blackboard announced the dishes daily, with a vocation declared by these two young chefs-entrepreneurs: their business sought to be a "showcase" for small producers in their environment, whose names they highlighted when presenting their dishes. "We started with what we had in our pocket, with the only idea of working with the environment and with people, because they are the lung of any town," recalls Javi Rivero, who, after studying Sound Engineering, decided on the BCC degree, which opened the door to work in Elkano and then in the food industry.

Allied with his friend and colleague Gorka Rico, they opened AMA Taberna, where "we defined ourselves as a showcase of suppliers, with a strong idea of street, producers and consumers, with the aim of making a link between them". With this bet and a very casual format, they were positioned until receiving several awards. Both are part of BCC's biannual 100 Young Talents of Gastronomy list (Rivero, in the 2020 edition, and Rico, in 2022). In June 2022, Rivero was included in 50 Next, version of The World's 50 Best Restaurants to identify the 50 talents that mark the future of global gastronomy. In 2022, they received a Sol de Guía Repsol. In January 2023, they were the winners of the award as Revelation Chefs of the Madrid Fusion 2023 congress, which in the past had been won by Dabiz Muñoz or Rodrigo de la Calle, among others.

Five years later, from that tasca project born as AMA Taberna they now pass to AMA "without surnames", after their move just a month ago to a larger premises in the neighborhood of Berazubi, in Tolosa.

How AMA changes with the move

On the one hand, in gaining space in kitchen and living room, yes, "without increasing the capacity of diners considerably", as Rivero points out. "We went from giving an average of 12 people inside to an average of 16 or 18 customers." If the previous place had a small terrace at street level that was essential to win chairs, in the new one there is also one "that does give us a little more play and we can stretch the total capacity of diners in a service up to 28 or 30 people, as a lot, on exceptional days such as Friday night, Saturday at noon and evening and Sunday." For the rest of the services, the AMA team "proposes an average of 22 diners or, at most, 24".

On the other hand, the transfer does suppose a conceptual change, although it seems that not of philosophy. "The goal is to break with the idea of the tavern, because although we were a restaurant for a long time, we did drag that initial surname of AMA Taberna. We want that, when someone walks through the door, they already understand that they are not in a bar, or in a tavern, or in a tavern, or anything like that and that we are in a restaurant."

And what does "restaurant" mean? "It is something a little more gastronomic with the most elaborate developments in terms of dishes and their approaches," says Rivero, who recognizes that "we had to make the move so quickly and it came together with the fact that two days before Gorka was a father that we decided to stop the natural gastronomic evolution that we were going to raise in the new AMA and start directly with what we were working on in the previous AMA ".

But the move has already generated effects on his proposal and how the diner perceives it. "In the first month, we have already realized that just by changing space and being able to do the work in a more comfortable way for the diner in a place like the one we have now, the perception of the client changes and greatly improves the feeling of value," reflects Rivero.

Teardrop pea dish.

The offer of the new AMA

After just over a month of filming, the duo owner of AMA is already immersed in "making new dishes and new approaches around the defense of our history and our product, which we have always done, but that increasingly we will try to limit ourselves to the products coming from as close as possible to work the culture and history of the region, but without neglecting Basque cuisine as such", says Rivero.

And, if asked to define what AMA is... "It is difficult to define the concept, but we could say that it is a Basque restaurant in which Basque culture and tradition are identified, with product cuisine." That translates into an offer that is divided into two. On the one hand, a menu focused more on the product "well bought and little touched, which means the simplicity of the product in its best texture and flavor", and with which it is recommended to share dishes, even proposing to the diner a tailor-made menu with the recipes that each one chooses. The average price a la carte could be calculated between 50 and 80 euros." The menu will tend to be reduced, with the idea of having 5 to 8 dishes, "they say, while this format is seen as an option for business clientele at noon during the week.

Recipes such as crab salad, roasted leeks, teardrop pea, mushrooms in its pilpil, mini fried omelette with beef tartare, stewed meatballs of rabbit, sheep and celery, roasted red mullet, hake and broth of ear or roast lamb. In addition, desserts such as the already famous cheesecake and torrija of AMA, along with options such as creamy beet cake or curd and apple honey ice cream.

The commitment to the tasting menu

And, on the other hand, there would be the alternative of the tasting menu, which "would be a little more experience, in which the story and interpretation of all the work we do comes into play, with a common thread focused on the history of the farmhouses and their why, the moment in which they are created, why they are created and their relationship with some products ", Rivero says. In that case, it would be 3 appetizers, 7 dishes and 3 desserts, that is, in total 11 passes. The so-called tasting menu of the region and hamlets has a price of 82 euros, without drinks (in January, the tasting menu that they dispatched in AMA cost 65 euros).

What does that mean about the defense of the farmhouse? "If we make American crabs with trout roe and crispy river algae, we want to make the client understand that the hamlet always has to be close to a water source, be it a river or a tributary. Or if we work with different textures of leek, we transmit that it is the only ingredient we have available all year round. Or the sea from the farmhouse would be the fried battered hake stewed in pig's ear broth. In addition, we work with different farmhouse animals, such as rabbits, horses, donkeys or sheep of native breeds, depending on the season. Thus, we seek to reunderstand the hamlet and its culture", explains Javi Rivero.

Under this approach, for the founders of AMA, this tasting menu "has been the natural evolution that the project has had. What we do not want is to disconnect from this thread everything we have done, because the evolution has been constant, not only because of the change of location, and each step we have taken has implied a small change that has marked the next moment of AMA", observes this chef, who believes that "it is the way to continue keeping connected the loyal customer who has lived this evolution and who is part of all this. A key has been not to have completely broken in front of the previous concept, although only the space changes many things. "

Rivero adds a reflection: "If we saw that more and more customers ask for the tasting menu, the menu would end up disappearing. It is the strategy we think, but for now we are seeing how the client understands that AMA is more of a gastronomic restaurant and, little by little, it is not being misoriented. " In any case, an increasingly exponential leap is guessed in the new AMA. "The first two years, we focused more on getting to know the product and the seasons; Now, little by little, we are getting more into the techniques, more classic and innovative, "he clarifies.

Javi Rivero and Gorka Gorka, from AMA. Pablo Garcia, Moment Studio.

The culture of the farmhouse is also noted in the interior design (very Basque and with that almost Nordic point that today permeates many young spaces), which uses materials and objects from these Basque houses in the area -where the guilds that have made the reform also come from-, a small exhibition photos of Basque women (by the photographer Eulalia de Abaitua) and a kitchen seen "to give transparency to what we do when driving. the product" and ensure more relationship between stove and dining room.

Visibility to producers

In the old AMA, its blackboard not only announced the daily supply of dishes, but the name of the small producers who supplied the ingredients to make them. "The local protects us," announces the bio of his profile on Instagram.

And, now that there is no blackboard, how do they make a speaker for their suppliers? "In the tasting menu, we are constantly talking about the region and the producers we work with," explains Rivero. "We may not tell all clients the same thing, but the people on the team know the projects and the people behind it and can tell it in a way and with their vision. We do not seek to overwhelm with information, but that the dishes speak for themselves."

Without being written on a blackboard or on the menu, the AMA team gives visibility to its battalion of suppliers on its website, where each dish on the menu is accompanied by the origin of the products that make them up. "We want to be a showcase of our environment, of our people, as mere communicators of the work of small farmers, ranchers, fishermen ... Our most difficult job is not to spoil yours", defend from their website the owners of AMA, who seek to "teach where things come from, how they are treated and how they think they have to be done".

The AMA team has also grown, with three professionals in the living room and four in the kitchen, including its two co-owners (which implies one more person in each case, after the move). "We will do more finishes and carvings in front of the client to go out more to the room," says Rivero. For example, "we are carving the farmhouse animals as fish are carved on the coast."

And the old AMA? It reopens these days renamed Bertakoteka, under a casual tavern format, almost a food house, with an offer of traditional Basque cuisine.

HOUSEWIFE. Martín José Iraola, 4. Tolosa (Guipúzcoa). Tel. 943 38 20 59. https://www.amataberna.net. Hours: Wednesday to Sunday at noon and Friday and Saturday night.

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