By Citlali Quezada, Luxury Travel Advisor, Roseville Travel
San Sebastián — Donostia in Basque — is a city of under 200,000 people with one of the highest concentrations of Michelin stars per resident anywhere in the world. It is also a beach town, which is an unusual combination.
Most Americans arrive and eat it wrong. Here is how it works.
Pintxos are a method, not a menu
A pintxo is a small plate, usually on bread, usually held with a cocktail stick. Bars in the Parte Vieja — the old town — line their counters with them.
The method:
You stand. Sitting down at a table in the old town means ordering full plates and missing the point entirely.
You order one or two things, plus a small glass — a txakoli, the local slightly sparkling white, poured from height, or a small beer called a zurito.
You move on. Three or four bars in an evening is normal. The crawl is the meal.
You ask what is hot. The best pintxos are not the ones sitting on the counter — those are the cold ones. The good stuff is cooked to order and chalked on a board behind the bar, usually only in Spanish or Basque. Ask what the house does. That question is the whole trick.
Some bars keep a tab. In others you tell them what you had at the end. Nobody is counting sticks any more.
Three things to eat
The gilda — an olive, an anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper on a stick. It was named after the Rita Hayworth film because it was considered green, salty and a little spicy. It is the original pintxo and every bar has one.
Anything with anchovies from the Cantabrian sea. They bear no relation to what comes on a pizza at home.
The burnt cheesecake at La Viña. It has been copied on every continent and it is still better here — set at the edges, almost liquid in the middle, no crust.
The three beaches
La Concha is the famous crescent, the one on every photograph, sheltered and shallow and busy.
Ondarreta sits beyond it past the tennis club — same bay, more local, generally calmer.
Zurriola is on the other side of the river, faces the open Atlantic, and is the surf beach. Younger crowd, real waves, and a completely different feel.
Walk up Monte Urgull for the view over the bay, or take the century-old funicular up Monte Igueldo for the postcard version.
The restaurants, if you want them
San Sebastián and the villages around it hold an extraordinary density of serious kitchens — Arzak and Akelarre in the city, Mugaritz at Errenteria, Martín Berasategui at Lasarte, and Asador Etxebarri an hour away in the Atxondo valley, which does nothing but cook over fire and does it better than anyone.
All of them book months ahead, several release tables on a fixed date, and Etxebarri in particular is one of the hardest tables in Europe. If one of these is the reason for the trip, tell us early — that is a booking that has to be chased, not requested.
Around the city
Bilbao is about an hour away and the Guggenheim justifies the trip on its own.
Rioja is ninety minutes south, and a day among the wineries is easy from here.
Getaria, twenty minutes along the coast, is a fishing village where they grill whole turbot over charcoal on the street. It is the best value meal in the region.
Biarritz and the French Basque coast are forty minutes north across the border.
When to go
June and September are the sweet spot. July and August are hot, packed and expensive — this is where Spaniards themselves go on holiday.
Late September brings the film festival, which fills the city. Lovely if you want it, difficult if you do not.
The north coast is green because it rains. Bring a jacket in any month.
Where it fits
San Sebastián is the anchor of the northern Spanish route — the one almost nobody plans and the one people who travel to eat should take. It sits in the middle of our ten-day Spain itinerary, between Madrid and Barcelona.
Call Roseville Travel at (916) 782-6363, and if there is a table you want, tell us months rather than weeks in advance.