Each element of the turbot brought a new taste to the mouth, a new approach to consumption—more chewing or less; the unconscious shifting of each bite to the front or back of the mouth—some of the meat surprisingly more dense and flavorful, some melting even as it touched the tongue. Andoni was wide-eyed as he ate, and speechless.

Eventually, after we fınished, he wanted to make a point about this cuisine and his own, speaking softly again: “At Mugaritz, we’re fascinated by the presentation of subtlety as the loudest voice, by the way intensity is guided by subtlety.” It was the same with the grilled turbot, he said. What we’d just eaten, the experience of it, could take you very far and deep, but you had to be willing to eat the cheek and the throat; you needed to respect the turbot’s translucent bones. It was dangerous, but you weren’t really tasting that fısh—and its life force—until you were willing to eat it all.

Back up on the mountain, the gardener worked the garden, the cows mooed, and the cut hay lofted its loamy perfume. Somewhere the goose lady sang to the geese, the mushroom hunter found a cache of chanterelles, and the shepherd milked the sheep for cheese. In the kitchen, the Mugaritzians ticked and tocked.

It was time to eat again.

In this new season—summery June—the menu was new again, too, strange and bright. It was startling to see a rush of original dishes just seven months after my winter meal. As if they’d entirely erased the chalkboard and started again. The oak tree in the garden was in full bloom. And the mood on the mountain was benevolent, airy, almost euphoric. It was a feeling of yet another resurrection—and it reminded me of another Andoni-ism.

“They say the cells of your body change every ten years,” he’d said. “But the cells of your tongue change every twenty days. So an organization like Mugaritz—I’d say we’re changing 60 percent every year. People come and go, ideas flip. We must accept the change even if we’re left clashing against what we thought last year.”

The frenetic rage to accept that change, or to make it, was the heartbeat here. And sitting at their table, I was convinced of two things: that I was alive and that I was going to die. And I wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t a morbid thought at all. The wind was blowing along the edge of the mountain, ruffling the glossy leaf-plume of the towering oak in the garden. Between this moment and the end, there’d be many more borders to cross, if one were willing. Change, both psychic and entropic, was inevitable and coming this way—and now it started with a meal.

The waiter came bearing “fısh bones” with lemon and cayenne, fried tendon in dipping ash and honey mead, red mullet in a butter of its own liver. There were scarlet shrimp ice shreds, and shark-fın soup without any shark (just roasted cauliflower). All of it sparking sweetness and salt, smoothness and prickles, hot and cold.

Everything seemed to mimic and expand everything else. The flower in tempura mimicked the fısh bones, which mimicked the dark branches of the oak tree in the garden. Hunger may be the loneliest pursuit—and the most communal, too. We are joined to one another by these patterns and emotions, the wine that tastes like the slate and granite of the clouds, the plumed leaves of the dark tree we sit under, eating dessert together.

In Andoni’s world, we are greater when our hungers combine and we act communally. In order to do that, we must greet one another in the kitchen with a hale hello and a “how are you?” Mugaritz isn’t just another high-end restaurant trying to convince you of an empty gimmick. And it’s not some lost Atlantis ruled by a half-mad genius and his compatriots. Once you’ve lived here awhile, it’s the most logical place on earth—and one of the most inspiring. Eat the food and you fınd yourself on a new path through the thicket, joined by the others around you, either fıghting to turn back to the comfort of what we know or slowly unmending what lies between us and some new destiny.