If we are anything, it’s who fed us.
And the hands that cooked before us, and the journeys we took, and the restaurants where we learned, and the music that played while all of that was happening.
Ortega y Gasset wrote, “I am myself and my circumstances,” and BAS (41 Lope de Rueda Street) seems to respond from the kitchen: I eat because I am, and I am because I eat.
Talking about gastronomic epiphanies has become a cliché ever since Marcel Proust turned a madeleine into literature. At BAS, the idea works differently: it’s about recalling the chefs’ childhoods through their cuisine. Memory ceases to be intimate and becomes something shared. Over the course of an entire meal, your taste buds end up inhabiting the memories of Gastón Dahir and Juan Patricio Campbell.
Memory that is also cooked
It all begins with a tiny bite that explains the restaurant better than any speech ever could. A pickled eggplant and a focaccia recreate the snack that Gastón’s grandmother used to prepare in Misiones. It doesn’t aim to impress with technique. It seeks something else: to evoke a memory.
Each dish seems to start from scratch, like a standalone story. There’s no obvious narrative thread connecting them, but there is a shared approach to cooking. The roast meat croquette (€3), for example, was created almost by accident during the restaurant’s renovation. They prepared a roast for the workers who were remodeling the space, and that meal ended up becoming a croquette that’s now on the menu. A dish born of hospitality even before the restaurant existed.
The artichokes with Jerusalem artichokes and grated mojama were one of the best dishes to grace our table. They were also the most fleeting. With the artichoke season over, so too does the dish’s presence on the menu. Now there will be something else. It’s a decision consistent with a kitchen that doesn’t want to become a catalog of permanent hits: the idea is to rotate and rotate.
Two chefs, one ego
There’s a story that explains BAS quite well, and it has nothing to do with the kitchen. Gastón and Juan met at a Dua Lipa concert they attended with their respective partners. They barely paid attention to the stage because they discovered they shared the same approach to cooking. It’s an almost anecdotal detail, but it helps explain why the restaurant works.
Kitchens are usually too small to accommodate two big egos. Here , the exact opposite happens. One completes and complements the other. Juan brings the rigor he learned in Italy, after working in kitchens like Bros*. Gastón brings the depth of his hunting expertise and the art of working with ingredients that he developed over the years at Santerra*. The result is a conversation between stories.
That’s also evident in the most daring dishes. Grilled tongue is almost a statement of intent. There’s an implicit challenge: to turn those who reject offal into converts. Not out of provocation, but because when a product is prepared well, prejudice ceases to matter.
The tagliolini with Sicilian tomatoes, carabinero shrimp, and sambuca perhaps best represents, more than any other dish, the balance that BAS strives for. If there were one small “but” to point out, it’s that the sweetness and intensity of the carabinero shrimp are slightly overshadowed by the acidity of the tomatoes. Although, that restraint is probably precisely the greatest virtue of Gastón and Juan’s cuisine: they never let one ingredient overpower the rest.
The savory finale arrives with a dry-aged squab served alongside the barley it was fed. More than a side dish, it serves as context. The dish tells the story of where the animal comes from even before explaining how it’s cooked.
Then comes a touch that sums up the restaurant’s personality quite well. The sheep’s milk flan inevitably brings to mind the one Juan used to make at Santerra. There’s no attempt to hide it or reinvent it. On the contrary. It’s served almost with pride. It’s a way of acknowledging the journey taken before launching his own venture.
The experience is complemented by a particularly well-curated wine cellar—spacious without being ostentatious—and service where sommelier Juan Pablo Nieva pairs each dish with ease, without turning the wine into a lecture.
It’s rare to leave a restaurant with the feeling of having witnessed the birth of something that’s still in its infancy but already has an identity. BAS gives precisely that impression. And it succeeds because it knows exactly who it is. And because it understands that, before cooking dishes, a memorable restaurant cooks up memories (its own and those of others).
