My favorite meal of 2014 was at Asador Etxebarri, near San Sebastian. It helped that this lunch took place on my honeymoon with my wife, making the meal even more meaningful. The 25-year-old restaurant, where chef Victor Arguinzoniz cooks most ingredients over a magical wood grill, lived up to the hype. He grew up in Axpe and continues to beautifully represent his bucolic Basque hometown. The brazo at Asador Etxebarri burns grape and grape vines for beef, and oak for seafood and vegetables. The tasting menu featured plenty of highlights, but no dish better than Palamós Prawns. Arguinzoniz sources these prized prawns from Spain’s Costa Brava, a coastal area north of Barcelona.

The large prawns arrive in their red shells, cooked on the grill, where they’re kissed with oak smoke before being seasoned with olive oil and sea salt. The shrimp are naturally sweet and fluffy, and given the exquisite cooking process, were my favorite shrimp to date.

The setting merely magnified the effects of the prawns, with a mountain backdrop and a flock of sheep that ambled down the main street as the sun set on a drizzly day.