Lasarte

Martín Berasategui holds more Michelin stars than any other chef in Spain. Lasarte, his three-star restaurant in Barcelona, is one of only sixteen restaurants in the country to hold that rank; it takes its name from Lasarte-Oria, the Basque town where Berasategui's other three-star restaurant, Martín Berasategui, is located.

Running the kitchen day to day is Paolo Casagrande, an Italian chef in a role rarely held by a non-Spaniard at this level of Spanish dining. The book credits him directly for the restaurant's exacting standards, and organizes its recipes around the arc of his and Berasategui's work together: dishes that have stayed on the menu since Lasarte opened, dishes that emerged as the restaurant grew into its reputation, and dishes built specifically for the "Il Millione Menu," conceived to move beyond a standard tasting menu, surpassing even a chef's table experience.

Among the recipes: a croissant served with a gold-dusted disk of trufflebutter flavored with celeriac and espresso. A cold asparagus soup with almonds and white prawns. Roasted red bream with fermented parsnip purée, pickles, anise, and Amarena cherry.

At 320 pages and nearly 9.5 by 12.6 inches, bilingual in Spanish and English, the book pairs its recipes with photography that lingers on each plated dish, carefully lit to match the precision of the presentation itself.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.