Boise Basque Block: Eat, Drink and Dive into Basque Culture
No city block in America is as thoroughly Basque as the Boise Basque Block, with nearly every building a reminder of the city’s generations of Basque immigrants. This makes the Boise Basque Block enriching and educational for family visits or for anyone.
The best place to start is the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, America’s only Basque museum. It’s filled with displays on the history of the Basques, especially in Idaho, who number about 3 million in northern Spain and southern France and millions more worldwide. The museum tells the story of how many found their way to Boise from Ellis Island to become shepherds.
Especially moving is a large exhibit on the bombing of the defenseless Basque town of Guernica, a 1937 atrocity committed by German and Italian forces that inspired the Picasso masterpiece.
Most of the block’s other attractions involve food and beverages:
> Leku Ona, Basque for “good place,” is true to its name. Besides outdoor courtyard and sidewalk seating, this Basque fine dining restaurant has a formal upstairs dining room; lively smoking and non-smoking downstairs lounge bars; a delightful mural of Basque shepherds above the stairway; and even five inn rooms.
> The Basque Center, founded in 1949, is the local Basque community center, with a bar, a card room and a social hall used for Basque dance performances and other events.
> Bar Gernika is a casual Basque pub and eatery with mostly house-made Basque sandwiches and appetizers, plus Basque wines. Most of the Basque sandwiches include lamb or chorizo, and all are served with croquetas (the Spanish version of fries).
> Basque Market specializes in Basque gifts, specialty foods, sandwiches and wines, with “Paella on the Patio” served every Wednesday at noon.
While strolling between Basque establishments, look down and you’ll notice that many of the sidewalk squares feature Basque song lyrics, family surnames and coats of arms.
HelloBoise Tip: On Saturday afternoons and the first Thursday evening of each month, Basque Museum admission includes a guided tour of the Cyrus Jacobs/Uberuaga House next door. It’s the oldest brick house in Boise (1864) and served as a boardinghouse for Basque shepherds for most of the 1900s. Stocked with 1920s-era furniture, you’ll get a true sense of how Basque shepherds lived—sleeping four to a room as boarders—when they were sheepless.
Posted on May 5, 2011 by Bob Cooper
