US gastronomic tourism experts and tour operators visit Biscay

A group of gastronomic tourism experts and tour operators were visiting Biscay during the last week, the Basque newspaper Deia said on Sunday. The trip was organised by the Biscay''s County council and was aimed to promote the charm of the Basque landscapes, culture and gastronomy in order to create a new culinary centre in New York, a kind of Euskal Etxea which would be a meeting point for the Basques living or visiting the Big Apple.

"A Basque restaurant with chefs from Biscay could be the perfect path for our products to reach the consumers" said Aitor Elizegi, a renowned Basque cook from the region together with Aitor Basabe.

From Saturday January 16th until Monday 25th, a group of North American experts in tourism have been travelling around Biscay to experience the Basque lifestyle first-hand. "Instead of selling out significant aspects of Euskadi, we invite these people to come and know them," Biscay''s County council''s Tourism department director Gabino Martinez de Arenaza said at a promotional meeting held at the museum of vintage cars Loizaga Tower, located in Galdames.

Thanks to a series of tourism trade procedures in Miami, the Biscay Council maintains contact with professionals of the leisure industry. After one year of talks with a group of experts on culinary tourism, the body has managed to make them come last week, "not only to visit the Basque Country but also to demonstrate that we''re offering a safe business."

The Tourism department of the Biscay county council organises visits intended for renowned people in the world of gastronomy and tourism to promote the Basque Country in general and the Biscay region in particular. Although the number of American tourists who visit the Basque area is not very high, they invest much money here. "We look for quality tourism, not quantity," Martinez de Arenaza remarked.

Among the guests was restaurateur and food critic Terry Zarikian, who has been travelling around the Basque Country for ten years at a frequency of two to three times a year. "I love it," he told Deia. He would like to open a restaurant that reflects the Basque essence. "It would be an ambitious project given that it is very difficult to take the gastronomy and culture of a country to another place."

The Basque cuisine is "very pure and the new chefs fusion classic food with innovating techniques, something that makes it even more interesting. The Basque cuisine is the best of the world," Zarikian added.