Euskal Txokoak

A man called Jesús opened the door and welcomed us in. He closed the door behind us and turned the big key to lock it. We were in, finally: a men’s-only cooking society. No women allowed. It was a big space with a kitchen at one end and well-worn wooden tables and stools at the other. With my bag of groceries under my arm, Jesús ushered me into the kitchen where two men were cooking the first of the season’s boletus mushrooms on a flat grill. Other men had already cooked and were sitting down to a plate of hake and a bottle of txacoli, the local tart white wine.