IT WAS the chorizo that really clinched it. Everywhere I went in Boise, the spicy sausage popped up on menus. At breakfast power-hub Goldy’s, it was the choice alongside ham and bacon. At brewpub Bardenay, alongside a standard burger, you could order a doorstopping Spanish sandwich. In fact, chorizo — named after the chorizero pepper that gives it both color and kick — isn’t just Spanish, it’s Basque. And, oddly enough, Boise, Idaho, is the expat Basque capital of the world.
To most Americans, Boise is a small, Western city that has recently experienced somewhat of a building boom. To the Basques, this 210,000-strong college town — which claims proudly to be the most geographically isolated city in America — is a home away from home, officially twinned with Guernica for almost two decades.
Basque clubs, social hubs that double as dance halls for the frenetic, peacockish “Riverdance”-like routines men learn from an early age, dot suburbs like Homedale and nearby towns like Mountain Home or Gooding here. The only break with Iberian tradition, one local explains, is that there was a shortage of fleet-footed men in the 1960s, so women were co-opted to help with high-kicking, making local routines unrecognizable to folks back in Euskal Herria (that’s Basque country).
For a time, a local supermarket had a standalone Basque section, doubtless for easy access to all that chorizo. In Boise’s bucolic, historic downtown, an entire block is dedicated to the Basques, its recent renovation funded by $25 donations from local families whose tongue-twisting surnames dot the sidewalk there. Crammed together on this Grove Street stretch, there’s the bright and basic 5-room B&B/cafe Leku Ona, the Basque Market grocery store, Bar Gernika which is known for its killer croquetas, a Basque Museum and even an old Fronton court, for games of exhausting handball, hidden inside lawyers’ offices.
There are Basque restaurants elsewhere, too, like Epi’s in nearby Meridian, run by the Ansotegui sisters who dish up hearty Maikalua — that’s cod in a heavy cream sauce — or the tangy meatballs, albondigak.
“Basques are always eating,” chuckles Chris Ansotegui, “And there’s no tofu here, hon.”
(There are, on the other hand, a few oddball local innovations: red wine mixed with coke and Picon Punch, a Long Island Iced Tea-like Basque cocktail that would never appear on a menu back home.)
“We’re the third largest minority in Idaho behind Hispanics and Japanese. Boise has been described by a man that came from Basque country as the Bilbao of America,” notes Basque-American lawyer Roy Eiguren, talking from his high-rise offices nearby, a Basque flag fluttering proudly on his desk.
Certainly, there’s a ferocious loyalty to Bilbao, as most of Boise’s expats are rooted in Vizcaya, the region around the Guggenheim-endorsed city. But more on that later.
“When we went to Leikitio, where my husband’s family is from, we ran into three people we knew from Boise,” explains Tara Eiguren, a onetime art teacher who runs the Basque Market with her husband, Tony. Despite her roots, she says she didn’t even know what a Basque was when she moved here.
The couple’s passionate about Euskera heritage, importing specialties like A-grade tuna in olive oil — the Basques are known for preserved food — white asparagus, kicky boozy cider, Txakolin fizzy white wine and even regionally-popular KAS soda. Their store sells hand-worked linens, too.
“We buy the fabric in Spain, then a little Basque lady in Boise sews it up to order,” she confides.
The language, of course, is a defining part of their culture — in fact, the word for a Basque literally translates as Basque-speaker — and the Eigurens have sent their young daughter to Basque-immersion kindergarten.
“I speak enough Basque to play cards with the old guys,” Tony says, referring to the fiendish Basque game of Moose, “but I grew up not knowing they were Basque words.”
“When Tony was young, it was grandparents’ day at school and he went home and cried because he didn’t have any,” his wife adds, “He only knew them as amuma, that’s grandmother, and atxitxa or grandfather.”
There are several reasons that these marginalized Iberian immigrants rose to such visibility in this isolated Western town (even the current mayor, Dave Bieter, is second-generation Basque-American).
The first wave of immigrants arrived in what would become Idaho in the aftermath of the Gold Rush from California; as the millionaire-minting opportunities dwindled there, they looked for work nearby.
Though culturally, Basques are largely fishermen, they were drawn to sheep-herding in the Idaho territory — not only did the landscape look reassuringly like home, but also sheep-keeping didn’t require them to speak English. Most experts agree that Basque as a language is unrelated to any other, and its Scrabble-winning spelling’s a hint at that exoticism. Learning English, then, was especially tricky for this group.
Even author Bernardo Atxaga, the Euskaldun answer to Salman Rushdie, includes a tale in his newest collection of stories — freshly translated by Boise State professor Nere Lete, who runs a well-subscribed language course here — about a man who came to Boise to work as a sheepherder.
Once the trickle of immigrants began, a charismatic pioneer, Matteo Aregui was soon assembling a troupe of expats. Packed onto trains after they arrived at Ellis Island by an Euskera fixer who looped an “I’m Going to Boise, ID — Help me” sign around their necks, he moved them into boarding houses together in the area that’s now the Basque Block.
Another factor: sheep-herding is back-breaking, mind-numbing labor and even now, every Basque, without fail, will casually slip some comment about their people’s devotion to hard work into conversation, meaning that their gnarly determination was especially well suited to the dominant industry around early Boise.
What’s more, the Basques have faced little or no prejudice in their history in Idaho — Roy Eiguren quotes his friend, former governor of Idaho Cecil Andrus, claiming there was never a Basque incarcerated in the state’s prisons. It’s not just down to honest labor: there’s a de facto caste system among Basques — the Spanish branch tends to sneer at its French counterparts (the source of the expats who dot California’s inland valleys today) since they never had to struggle against oppression, like Franco’s outlawing of the language.
And that same Spanish chunk, notably the Vizcaya region, was the only part of the Iberian Peninsula to resist conquest by North African Moors in the Middle Ages. The result: Unlike elsewhere in Spain, the Moors deeded neither their cuisine nor their DNA — a Basque could be a redhead or a brunette, allowing the community to blend in despite its exotic language.
The contemporary resurgence and embracing of Basque culture here — like the 25-strong immersion kindergarten the Eigurens’ daughter passed through, or that all-Basque block — is thanks to a second, more recent wave of immigration after World War II. The Western Range Association needed a fresh infusion of shepherds, so a slew of Franco-fleeing Basques joined their relatives here.
Unlike nineteenth-century arrivals, though, they didn’t equate opportunity with English speaking, needing to cast aside their mother tongue. Rather, they could embrace both with pride — like Dave Bieter, who claims to be the only Basque mayor, here or in Spain, to speak the language fluently. He has his own theory as to the reasons behind Basques thriving here.
“I think it has to do with the fact that Boise is a very remote city, in fact we’re the remotest city of our size in the country,” Bieter told me. “Basques came in numbers that were high for the area at the time, and stood out in Boise because of the geography of the city.” In other words, he says, the people and their adoptive city share a rugged sense of independence — a perfect, accidental match.
For more information log on to visitidaho.org
THE LITTLE BASQUE BLACK BOOK OF BOISE
Starting in February, you won’t need to trek all the way to Boise to experience Basque America; historian Patty Miller, who runs the city’s Basque Museum, has just booked an exhibition at Ellis Island that she will compile and curate, called “The Basques: Hidden in Plain Sight”. In the meantime, here’s a quick guide to the best of Basque Boise.
Bar Gernika
, 202 S. Capitol Blvd.
Grab a beer and sit outside at one of the patio tables, noshing on Basque bar snacks like crispy fried croquetas.
Basque Center
, 601 Grove St.
Dance lessons are held here frequently, not to mention games of Moose.
Basque Museum
, 611 Grove St.
There’s an exhibit on history and fishing culture, plus a guided tour through a pioneer home that became a Basque boarding house next door ($4 adults, $2 ages 6-12, free 5 and under, Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.-3 p.m.).
The Basque Market
, 608 W. Grove St.
Pick up picnic fixings here — make sure to buy a special nozzle for that cider so you can pour it out aerated, Basque-style.
Epi’s
, 1115 N. Main St., Meridian, (208) 884-0142
The decade-old family-run restaurant sits in an unassuming bungalow in the suburb of Meridian.
Leku Ona
, 117 S. 6th St.
A down-home restaurant and 5-bed B&B, with rooms starting from $65.
For more information, visit
www.boisebasques.com