I came here for dinner Monday night, as I have been meaning to make it over after dining at its sister restaurant, Donostia, a few months ago. It's Basque food, and my friend and I had also just been to Bilbao recently so we were also excited to relive those fond dining memories. The restaurant is very beautiful, with a quieter front room and a busier back room that came accommodate tables as large as 10-12 people. What I found interesting was that the menu was relatively simple: there are some small picoteo nibbles, then 3 seafood small dishes, 1 meat small dish, 4 choice of vegetables and sides, and 3 choices for large sharing plates. I think the ideal group size would have been 4 people, given the lack of one person mains.
I had read that the steak was the best dish to have and hoped to repeat the Galician milker amazingness that I had at Kitty Fisher's last year. Unfortunately the smallest cut they had left that day was 1.1 kilos and the price was £68 / kilo, but I was set on it so we ordered it anyway. The staff said that was normally shared between 3-4 people. We tried to order less small plates, but still wanted a selection, so we got the Gernika peppers, squid stuffed with prawns and chorizo, and tomato salad. I wasn't all that pleased that the only choice for raw vegetables was tomato salad, basically sliced tomatoes dressed in olive oil, salt, and pepper, but I felt we needed something to offset the richness of the steak.
The Gernika peppers came first and there were a lot of them, but they were quite firm instead of the normally limp Padron peppers, and it almost felt like they hadn't been entirely cooked through. The squid stuffed with prawns and chorizo was amazing, though, and I would have that again in a heartbeat. The tomatoes and the steak came together. We had asked for the steak medium rare, but when it came it was clear they had just seared the outside and the meat was one of the most rare steaks I have ever gotten. It was also incredibly fatty, and we found ourselves cutting off a piece of fat from nearly every piece. The tomatoes were a good pairing, but it's hard to be thrilled about a sliced tomato that costs £6, no matter how refreshing it is.
I thought I would have liked Lurra more, given the rave reviews from the dining community, but I thought the steak was a letdown. It did not even come close to the one at Kitty Fisher that first got me believing in the Galician milker type of steak. The only dish I'd have again is the squid. Oh, and the whole place is rather expensive, especially when they don't offer you smaller cuts of meat. read more