San Sebastian in the Basque Country in northern Spain is world renowned as a foodie pilgrimage destination, and that’s not just for the Michelin-starred fine dining. The whole town revolves around the pintxos, these small plates really are the main attraction of the beautiful seaside resort.
My wife and I took the train there from London (take a look at my Instagram Stories highlight for more details on that) for a week to explore all it, and nearby Bilbao, has to offer. Here’s a selection of the huge number of highlights from exploring these incredible cities through our stomachs.
Top 5 meat pintxos
Everywhere you go are huge steaks, cooked rare, and legs and legs of jamon iberico hanging from ceilings of bars. It’s an area that really appreciates great meat cooked perfectly and it’s hard to go wrong with the amazing variety of dishes available.
- Jamon iberico is one of the best things to ever come from Spain in my opinion, so it’s always worth hunting down. We queued up for Ganbara in San Sebastian for a huge plateful and it was perfect. The nutty delicate flavour of each thin bite was amazing.
- Borda Berri in San Sebastian’s old town is a really popular bar. If you’re able to get a spot, it’s definitely worth ordering their pork rib (as well as the beef cheek that they’re most well known for) which is just so tender and packed full of incredible flavours like cloves, honey and pepper.
- On the last stop after a long night of pintxos we popped into Topa Sukalderia, a Mexican restaurant near our hotel in the Gros district of San Sebastian for some of their ‘Basque Al Pastor’ tacos. The pork had so much flavour, and sat perfectly inside the soft corn and millet tacos, under some salsa and guacamole. Just what you want to finish off an evening out! Technically not pintxos, but definitely pintxos-sized.
- One of the best spots for understanding gluten intolerances was Gandarias in the old town of San Sebastian. They can do most of their pintxos ‘sin gluten’ and their steak, served on a skewer instead of bread, is cooked perfectly rare and seasoned. They have a separate box of GF sliced baguette that they can serve you too, as most dishes typically come with a few pieces of bread.
- Cafe Iruña in Bilbao has a Moorish theme, with walls covered with beautiful tiles and ornate lamps hanging from the ceiling. Their speciality are spiced lamb kebabs, cooked in front of your eyes and then covered in fresh lemon juice. It’s always great to find something special like this that no other bar does.
Top 5 seafood pinxtos
Fishing has long been the backbone of Basque culture. Historically, they were some of the best shipbuilders and sailors of their time, and from that were among the first to reap the benefits of fishing not just from the Bay of Biscay, but right the way up into the North Sea, Arctic waters, and even as far over as Nova Scotia in Canada. There’s a huge variety of seafood on offer in terms of delicious pintxos, so here are a few of my favourites from our trip:
- We stumbled into Bar Martinez without a recommendation, but thought it looked great and had a good atmosphere with a hum of Spanish and Basque voices. I can’t actually tell you the name of the skewer we had (a lot of pintxos-ing is pointing with my broken Spanish ‘Dos de estos por favor’ and hoping) but it was a small oily fish (potentially sardine) covered in diced raw garlic and herbs and it was amazing. Fresh and tangy, a lovely lunch bite.
- A very popular spot in San Sebastian is Atari Gastroleku in the old town. It sits right infront of a beautiful church so outside tables are at a premium. We were able to lean inside though and had some beautifully delicate confit cod which was one of the dishes we’d been told to look out for from their menu.
- Cervecerias La Mejillonera really felt like a Basque chippy, as we leant against the metal counter looking at illuminated photos of the dishes available. Mussels are their speciality so some of those alongside some patatas bravas, padron peppers and sangria was the order of the day.
- Towards the end of our time in Gros in San Sebastian we again ventured outside of our research to Bodega Donasterria Gros. We made sure to go early because we’d seen how busy it would get, and we soon knew why. We had some incredible plates including grilled octopus, tortilla, chorizo, and a vinegar salad with tuna, anchovies, onions and guindilla peppers. Well worth venturing out of the old town for.
- Ganbara is going to get quite a few mentions in this post, this time it’s their grilled prawns. Fresh, succulent, and the heads were packed with so much flavour.
Special extra mention to some non-pintxos seafood we had and was amazing, including the incredible fried anchovies at Bodegon Alejandro in San Sebastian’s old town packed full of flavour, and not at all oily. Another mention would be for a mountaintop restaurant called Txakoli Ballano, a short walk from the top of the funicular in Bilbao, where I had some of the best monkfish I’ve ever had.
Top 5 vegetarian pinxtos
It’s not all about the meat and fish though, some of the real stars from the trip were vegetables…
- Padron peppers are always delicious, salty mouthfuls to nibble alongside a drink. While these are available in many pintxos bars, we really enjoyed the ones at Cervecerias La Mejillonera. As a little tip, they’re also known as gernika peppers which we saw on menus much more often than padron.
- Garlic potatoes at Bar Ciaboga were an absolute revelation. It’s a really small place with only bar seating, but well worth hunting down near the La Concha beach for their speciality potatoes which they’re known for. Soft chunks of potato covered in garlic and oil and you then sprinkle paprika on top for that extra punch of flavour and colour.
- One of the simplest and best dishes was the tomato salad, again at Ganbara, which was slices of fresh tomato drizzled in the finest olive oil.
- Tortilla is another thing that is everywhere. Each bar has their own twist on it, with the most iconic being at Bar Nestor which was unfortunately closed while we were there. If like us you can’t get there, we had great tortilla in many places including the one pictured above from Bar Baster in Bilbao. Another fantastic one was at Cafe Bar Bilbao.
- There’s a few really iconic dishes from San Sebastian that you have to have, and the grilled mushrooms with an egg yolk at Ganbarra is one of them. The best mushrooms I’ve ever had, full of smoky grilled flavour and then the texture you get when you burst the yolk into the hot mushrooms is just perfection.
Top drinks
I know these aren’t pintxos per-se, but they are a big part of pintxos life. Typically in each bar you’ll have a drink and a plate or two of their speciality. As well as having food specialities, different places are also often known different drinks. The drinks are incredibly reasonably priced there and in my opinion it’s hard to beat a great glass of rioja for €3.
- If you’re after a quality, Spanish-style G&T full of tonnes of ice, then La Gintoneria Donasterria in the Gros district of San Sebastian is excellent. They’ve got hundreds of gins, many I hadn’t had before like Gin Raw from Spain which I went for. We also had great G&Ts at Rua 887 which was under our hotel for the last part of our stay.
- For fantastic natural wine, Arenales just outside the old town in San Sebastian is a great shout. They’ve got a fantastic selection of very reasonable and delicious organic and biodynamic wine and are just at the edge of the old town so you’re set up perfectly for your night of eating afterwards. We didn’t get to try their food there, but have heard that is worth going for as well.
- Txakoli wine, a very dry local white wine, is everywhere. It’s lovely and refreshing and it’s incredibly good value (usually €2-3 per glass). I didn’t take any pictures of it on its own, but while we were out at Topa which I mentioned earlier, I did have their Euskojito which is a basque take on a mojito using txakoli wine, sprite, lime and mint. Loved it!
- Talking of mixing wine and fizzy drinks, a local speciality is kalimoxos: red wine mixed with coke. You may have seen it modelled by James Acaster in a recent Travel Man episode with Joe Lycett, and while it takes a second to make sense and taste like something you might enjoy, it does get there after a few sips! We had ours at Cafe Bar Bilbao on the main square in the old town as that’s where they’d had theirs on the show.
- While we were in Bilbao we were recommended La Viña Del Ensanche and their Carineña wine. It was definitely the thing to go for, with every customer walking into the bar asking for these small glasses of unlabelled sweet wine from beneath the counter.
- Vermouth is a big thing too, and one of the best spots for a great pre-dinner vermouth that we found was in Bar Baster in Bilbao. We also popped into Promenade Vermutería while walking through Bilbao and enjoyed a great vermouth and Aperol cocktail with some tinned sardines.
Deserts
I couldn’t talk about Basque food and not mention cheesecake. Slices of barely set creamy heaven are dished out non-stop at their spiritual home at La Viña in San Sebastian. With a wall stacked high of burnt cheesecakes, you can tell why the restaurant is constantly busy and always on people’s ‘must visit’ lists when in the town.
More great pintxos and meals
There’s so much incredible choice that it’s hard to go wrong, we certainly didn’t have anything we regretted and many places we went back to multiple times. Because of that, here are a few extra shout outs for places we ate that maybe weren’t as standout as the ones above but were still great:
San Sebastian: Goiz-Argi (prawn skewers), OhBaba (brunch), Paco Bueno (fried prawns), Izkiña (squid and crab), Kota4 (cheeseboard – gluten free bread available), Lasai Maitia (breakfast – gluten free bread available), Old Town Coffee, Bar Antonio (octopus and tomato skewer), Bar Federico (rice with squid).
Bilbao: Bar Irrintzi (gluten free pintxos menu), Gure Toki (cod pil pil, croquetas, beef cheek), Arvo Coffee and Plants (breakfast – gluten free bread available and right next to the Guggenheim), El Globi (tortilla).
