Basque food in northwest Nevada

We just got back from vacationing in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area and wanted to try Basque restaurants: Louis' Basque Corner in Reno and J T Basque Bar and Dining Room in Gardnerville. Both have family style dining; you sit at a large table and sometimes share some of the food with other diners, which is fine with us. Lunch included soup, salad, beans, french fries, and a bottle of house red wine to share among our party of four. JT, though a bit more expensive, also included stew, dessert, and coffee. Each diner chooses an entree, though in Louis' Basque Corner you can purchase the meal without an entree for $14, a good deal if 2 people want to share an entree. At Louis', the soup of the day was Manhattan Clam Chowder; at JT, a similar but lighter vegetable soup without the clam broth. For an extra $1 per person at Louis, we ordered garlic fries -- generous portions of garlic. The fries were thickish (though not overly so) in Reno, thin cut (my preference) at JT. The stew at JT was a generous serving of oxtail stew for 4 people -- excellent! (You could order oxtail stew as an entree at Louis, though we didn't.) The beans were excellent at both locations, cooked with bacon and chorizo at Louis, smoky at JT. The entrees at Louis were more standard fare, except for the sweetbreads, nicely garlicky and flavorful but somewhat overcooked. The choices at JT (more expensive for lunch, but well worth it) were more interesting. The sweetbreads were less garlicky but tender. My daughter and I shared the pigsfeet and tripe, much recommended for LTHers and probably few others! The lamb shoulder was very nicely seasoned, better than the (overcooked) leg of lamb at Louis. And Catherine chose the Basque chicken, chicken breast (she would have preferred dark meat) with tomato and peppers. We enjoyed both lunches but especially JT -- highly recommended if you are in the area.

I have been to Louis Basque Corner as well as the other one in Reno, the Santa Fe Hotel which has reopened in May 2019 after a closure of about a year. They both offer a very similar experience - good solid meals in a communal setting.

However, IMO, the best Basque eateries are in Elko, NV in the NE portion of the state. The Star Hotel offers some of the best Basque meals in Nevada.

If you want to experience Basque cooking, I would strongly advise that you get there in the next five years as many of the great Basque cookeries are closing down. Remember that the Basque restaurants were generally part of a hotel servicing the Basque community. These hotels are gradually closing down. The restaurants are less popular than they were ten or twenty years ago. Elko at one point had FOUR Basque restaurants. They are now down to two.