Ansots Basque Cuisine – Boise, Idaho
Historian Jan Morris wrote “Basque is one of the world’s more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words – profanities, I assume.” Ellie Ansotegui, co-owner (along with her father Dan) of Ansots Basque Cuisine in Boise, Idaho lived in Basque Country for a year where she studied the language, enhancing the intermediate proficiency she had acquired growing up in a Basque family. Alas, she returned to her Boise hometown and without practicing it faithfully, quickly lost the additional mastery she acquired in Spain. Ellie has advanced writing, reading, listening, and speaking proficiency in Spanish. For fear of not being understood, I didn’t…