Let’s start with deconstruction. Madrid, one morning in October, chef Javi Estévez is setting up his Gilda – which is not a Gilda at all – in his offal-specialized, Michelin-starred restaurant La Tasquería. Of the pure Gilda, two of the three preserved ingredients remained in his invention, the olive and the “sour-spicy” – as he says – Basque chili or piparra. The other, salted anchovy, disappears and is replaced by smoked sardine. And he introduces his house brand offal: two tacos with cooked Iberian pork tongue plus chicken liver pâté. For adults: sun-dried tomatoes, crinkle-cut fries with peppers, goat cheese cream, extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar reduction, dill. The chef follows the Gilda concept and creates a dish in which all these ingredients are arranged on a small tray: the wooden stick also disappears. This is Estévez’s juicy and unique Gilda, which, as he himself insists, “is not a Gilda.” In the visible kitchen, his team is preparing for the first service and Bad Bunny is playing over a loudspeaker, the star, whose motto matches what this chef did with Gilda: YHLQMDLG (I Do What I Want).
Now let’s rebuild.
One November morning in San Sebastián, Juan Pedrera picks up the phone and says: “Let’s see, a Gilda, what a Gilda is, is a manzanilla olive, our country’s chili pepper, and a Cantabrian anchovy, all of high quality, skewered on a toothpick , Better square than round, so that the ingredients don’t dance, and drizzled with a little olive oil.” He speaks from Casa Vallés, where, according to legend, a customer named Joaquín Aramburu, nicknamed Txepetxa, in Basque the wren, tiny and at the same time very powerful Trill, the snack they gave him, mixed with his wine a stick until one good day he enjoyed the pintxo, looked at it and announced to the world: “That’s a Gilda.”
Anchovies, piparras, green olives and as guests a black olive and a pickled onion: the dance of Gilda.Geray Mena
The film Gilda had just arrived in Spain.
Txepetxa drew an analogy between his cover and the figure of Rita Hayworth, who at that time was an erotic paradigm in Spain and the subject of the moral censorship of the Church, and word of mouth spread about the Gilda “because she was green and salty” and a little spicy,” says Pedrera.
San Sebastián-based food writer Marti Buckley will publish “The Book of Pintxos (Artisan)” in 2024, to which she has dedicated three years of research. During his research, he found a photo of a Gilda from 1942 in the Martínez Bar in San Sebastian, so according to his documentary research, the Gilda must have officially existed before Txepetxa gave it a name. Pedrera limits himself to telling his story. He assumes that every legend is controversial, even contestable: “The people from Bilbao say they invented Gilda.”
This is how the Gilda took root in the Basque Country and spread throughout Spain for decades until it now forms the dome of the Aperitif Church.
The Gilda version by Carlos del Portillo from the Madrid Bistronómika with red tuna from Almadraba.Geray Mena
The popularity of this pintxo has been particularly strong in recent years. Alfredo Escobar, Kiki, member of the Pintxo Institute of San Sebastián, claims that the peak of popularity is linked to the tourist explosion in his city. “It’s the first thing everyone who arrives has to try, and now that everyone comes here, it’s become, if possible, even more famous,” he says. Buckley also believes tourism has changed the Gilda’s size; and adds another factor, the cultural tendency to reclaim what is traditional.
Gabriel Bartra, content director of Bullipedia (elBullifoundation, by Ferran Adrià), locates the Gilda’s roots in the Neolithic, when it began to be preserved, and says of its contemporary evolution: “It has surpassed a simple pintxo. It originates in a specific geographical location, it is known and reproduced in other places, and then versions are created: that is where you can see its impact. This implies that it is part of the collective gastronomic memory of a country.”
Transcendence means putting in one bite the Gilda version of Carlos del Portillo, Bistronómika (Madrid), an infamous grilled fish restaurant. With his Gilda, all this is spread on your palate in a single moment: Kalamata olives, piparra – the aforementioned pickled chili pepper, typical of the Basque Country -, crushed dried Korean chili peppers, pickled French onions, onions that are not onions, loin and red almadraba tuna belly and a delicious olive and anchovy mayonnaise; Everything comes together in no time, wrapped in a stainless steel skewer whose cold metallic touch on the tongue adds elegance. “I took the Gilda from the bar and put it on the table,” summarizes Del Portillo, who decided on this wonder after tasting those from Casa Marcelo by Marcelo Tejedor in Santiago; In 2013, the Galician chef invented a gilda in which he replaced the anchovy with hake and added pieces of jalapeño.
Ingredients of the Gilda version by Carlos del Portillo, where the Almadraba bluefin tuna stands out. Geray Mena
Del Portillo jokes that the Gilda is his best-selling “dessert” because even though they usually serve it as an appetizer, it is common for customers after their meal to ask him to finish with another helping of Gildas. If you want, he can also refine it with a little caviar.
On the same street as Bistronómika is La Cocina de Frente, which readily serves the simple Gilda, the one with three jams mounted on a stick. Its chef Carlos García Pérez defines it as “the perfect appetizer to whet the appetite and drink a beer before eating”. “The Gilda penetrates and opens your mouth completely, it activates your palate with the saltiness of the anchovy, the spiciness of the piparra and the freshness of the olive, which does not have such an intense taste, but for me it is what completes the whole thing. “ entirely “. He attaches particular importance to serving a good Gilda because he considers it a parameter of hospitality competition: “From the first bite of a Gilda, you already know how you are going to eat in a restaurant.”
Instead of the classic toothpick, Del Portillo skewers his Gilda with a stainless steel skewer. Geray Mena
The aperitif now has its own special day. Since 2018, the Gilda and Pintxo Brotherhood has celebrated Gilda Eguna, Gilda Day, every December (this year on Saturday December 16) in San Sebastián. “We thought it deserved recognition because it is the pintxo par excellence,” says Sonia García Olazabal, spokeswoman for the organization. The day includes a competition called Gilda Innova. In 2021, he won one consisting of a Gordal olive stuffed with piparra and anchovy tartare with chili and red onion mayonnaise and a ground black olive base; In 2022, another product containing apple, spirulina, apple cider and dehydrated tomatoes won first prize.
La Gilda is no stranger to the era of experimental cuisine, whose desire for ingenuity can be exaggerated, especially when it comes to compositions that are perfect in their elemental nature. Although Javi Estévez emphasizes in La Tasquería that he has no intention of presenting his mixture of preserves and offal as Gilda, he assumes that the phenomenon is gradually becoming dizzying: “The subject is being thought about a lot, often in “ In In reality, you see skewers with ingredients from the Gilda.” In the brotherhood, people are clear about what a “good Gilda” should be. On their website they write that “the piparra is not very large and has a hint of vinegar, that the anchovy is fine and without beards and that the olive is of the chamomile type, without seeds.” “It should be taken in one bite , to be able to enjoy all the aromas and flavors at the same time.”
As it is, the brothers say, they give it to Casa Vallés. With one caveat: To stay true to the origins, they use pitted olives like they did in the 1940s. Apparently this orthodox detail has made life difficult for some tourists. Everything is designed to enjoy the charm of San Sebastián and the unforgettable taste of Gilda.
CREDITS
Photography Geray Mena
Set design and styling by Sara de Miguel
Lighting Diego Perez
Sand retouching