My first visit to Spain! I’ve traveled quite a bit in Italy and France, but never quite made it to the Iberian peninsula. I leave for 3 weeks in July. Looking for great meals in two categories, meals up to 100€/person and budget ideas: pinxtos, tapas, bars beer and wine) etc…. We like to do lunches at the more $ places and graze in the evening, though a few dinner spots are also appreciated. Also, any must see sights out of the usual ones in each city. I will be tasting at a few bodegas in Rioja, so need for those recs. Many thanks!
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Worth checking out Marti Buckley’s (cookbook author who lives in San Sebastián) website. She’s been pretty responsive to messages on Instagram as well (at least to me)
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Ask the question on Hungry Onion. Italy, Spain, Portugal - Hungry Onion
The user “Maribel” on the Spain board lives there and is very helpful. And there is already quite a few threads around such topics
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Agreed with @honkman maribel is the best and has personally turned me on to tens of restaurants through her personal recommendations. I think she reviews and writes travel guides for a living
I created a thread about my travels through Bilbao and San Sebastián 2 years back.
between Bilbao and San Sebastián is a restaurant called bedua and that was one of, if not, our favorite meals of the trip. Would highly recommend and I still think about that meal often
https://maps.app.goo.gl/hcyd7Py9j5zED7d27?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
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@Grog this is the whole list of places I ate at in the basque region feel free to ask any additional questions.
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Oh man, what a fantastic report. Dude, you ate like it was your last weeks. Damn! All kidding aside, I’m going to look up all those places.
Just curious what you think is the best strategy for the pintxos crawl?
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lol if I had the time I would eat like that every day.
What do you mean by strategy? like choosing places, what to eat, or time of day?
Walk around the old part of San Sebastian and see where the crowds are.
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I have a list of places, and I assume some of these are hard to get to the bar, such as Ganbara (I know to show up 30 min before opening). Some places allow you to reserve in the restaurant portion, but I assume you cannot order pintxos? Let me get a list of places and perhaps help me with any insider tips.
Ganbara- Hongos, crab, Hake
Borda Berri-Risotto de Idiazabal
Bar Nestor-Tortilla, peppers/tomato, Queue up at 11 am for a chance at the tortilla.
La Viña- Cheesecake
La Cuchara de San Telmo-Foie a La Plancha
Bar Antonio-Tortilla Española
Tambo
Lanperna - prawns
La Cepa- Txipirón plancha (grilled squid)
Bar Sport-Txistorra (smokes sausage)
Bodega Donostiarra Gros-Pulpo a la brasa
Casa Vallés-Gilda
Bar Sport
One thing that surprised me in San Sebastian is that we’d go for morning coffee at the bar next to our pension and even at that hour there were piles of pintxos and people already eating them. But I guess they work as well for breakfast as at any other meal.
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Are you doing the tapas crawl over a number of days? Or just allotting one day for the crawl?
Here’s my general thoughts about a pinxtos crawl:
- A realistic assessment of what you can eat in any given time frame. If you either can’t eat a lot or are an order too much type of person either of those things mean that you will definitely have to pace yourself. Do not overload at the first couple spots, you can always come back but unless you’re booting and rallying its hard to create more stomach space lol.
- Then deciding which places are can’t miss spots. For me that was at a minimum la vina because i love cheesecake lol, everything else for me was kind of negotiable. Not having too many can’t miss spots can help free you up and make decisions on the go and have it become more of an adventure and less like some stifled tour itinerary, where you feel like you are wasting time and not enjoying the moment.
- I bookmarked all the places I was interested in on google maps and just went from one place to another if I was nearby and if there were crowds just came back later. Have a pinxto get a glass of txakoli enjoy and then map out your next destination based on your book marks.
- Walking is your friend as it allows you to reset and get more food in. Cooked food pinxtos/prepared a la minute are generally better than the bar pinxtos that are sitting at the display cases
- Enjoy and have fun I feel like as food obsessed people we are sometimes trapped into trying everything or the “best” things but it’s important to just have fun and accept you might have a dud sometime but just drink the txakoli enjoy being in a beautiful city and move to the next spot on your list.
Use these resources to cross reference whether you think a spot is good and the dishese you want to try or not or whether you’d be willing to drop in, every spot is packed when you’re walking around so it’s hard to decipher what’s good from what are tourist traps:
I would also highly recommend hitting up Maribel on the HungryOnion board, she’s an industry insider and tourism writer and has a pulse on the hottest restaurants in all the cities in spain. She has literally never led me wrong and she is super nice and helpful
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Good advice. We have 3 full days to explore. I really want to eat at Ganbara and my girl will definitely need that cheesecake…lol. I have those lists and more! I realize I may not get to all of the places and I’m sure we will discover others. Being that it will be July, I expect big crowds and heat. We will have a car, so thinking about maybe one or two dinners outside SB. Petritegi Sagardotegia, Iribar Jatetxea. Other ideas? Not really into doing the Michelin stars.
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A car is a pain in the ass in San Sebastian.
La Viña is great as a restaurant. We liked it so much we ate there three times. Some of the best ham I’ve ever had, the chef visits the farm and chooses individual legs. Great chuleta de buey. The bar was usually jam-packed with locals chattering away.
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A place that is not on your list Narru ( Google Search ), we only stopped in for a drink and two pinxtos it was in the middle of the crawl. It’s a ways away from the tourist quarter and is much more of a “locals” restaurant. Make reservations. They were not very friendly with us because we didn’t have reservations and maybe because they don’t like tourists lol. I wanted to eat more food but was worried that I would not be able to eat at all of the spots during the crawl if I ordered a meal there. This along with cuchara are places that I would return to immediately, I would be willing to dedicate a whole meal here. They have an open kitchen and the quality of food they were cranking out was highly evident, apparently their chef worked at some pretty famous other restaurants before like arzak. It’s in the michelin guide, has 2 soles in repsol if those things matter to you.
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Go ask Maribel on the HungryOnion board she will know the best. We had a car because we drove from bilbao to biarritz and back. There’s many places to explore outside the city but it depends what you want to do with your time. 3 days is kind of short and there’s so much to do in the city. We had our 2 year old with us so we went to the beach a lot. I wanted to organize a txakoli tasting outside of the city but we couldn’t fit it in, you have to call each of the wineries seperately and make reservations as most of them don’t have american style tasting rooms but it can be done if you speak a little spanish.
One place we never made it to that I wanted to go was casa julian/casa nicolas in tolosa which is 30 min outside of san sebastian. Casa julian is the more famous of the two they are on opposite sides of a river in tolosa, but serve highly similar menus.
Walk to the top of this mountain right next to the beach and have a beer/txakoli its a great view.
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We have an Airbnb with a garage!
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Awesome! Thank you, just what I was hoping for. We actually have 4 nights, so half days bookending the 3 full days. This will be after about 10 days in Barcelona, Bilbao and Rioja. I have some bodega visits in Rioja. Will check out Narru.
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Wow sounds like you will be eating great. Two other places we were very interested in going to but never made it outside of the area but still in town were:
HAIZEA JATETXEA
Rekondo
We went to Narru for an actual dinner and it was good, don’t know if it blew me away. BUT we also went here for a break from eating too many pintxos in the previous days. Nice to be able to order some simple vegetable dishes that aren’t fried. 
Ganbara was one of my favorites because of the mushroom/egg dish. I would probably eat in at the restaurant there next time.
I did line up for the tortilla at Bar Nestor and it was good… but not so good you need to go out of your way for it. You’re really doing it for the FOMO. I did not get a chance to try Bar Antonio because they were closed for a holiday by the time I tried to go, but I hear their tortilla is excellent and easier to get.
I’ve heard mixing things about Rekondo now, mostly that it is now hard to find good QPR from their wine cellar (their extensive wine list is one of the primary draws).
Having a car opens up the surrounding area, and I intend to explore that more on future trips. Driving out for Elkano was worth it. We couldn’t get a table at Casa Julian, but that was somewhere we wanted to go. I’d consider a dinner at a cider house too if they are open for the season.
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