🥓🫒🦐 The quintessential item of Basque cuisine is the pintxo (pronounced pincho, the 'tx' representing a 'ch' sound). A pintxo is a small savoury snack, bigger than bite-sized and generally breadier than tapas. They're displayed on the counter in bars to be eaten alongside a drink, sometimes a choice of umpteen and sometimes just the specialities of the house. Think cheesy ham or spiked olives with tomato or anchovies with truffle or sliced tortilla or stacked jamón chunks or cod croquettes or battered chorizo or stuffed mussel or lamb sweetbread or squirts of foie, even scooped-out sea urchin with a creamy mix of squid and mushroom, lightly grilled. There are no set combinations so you either have to ask exactly what they are or just dive in and take pot luck, a gamble you're very likely to win. It takes two or three to satisfy an appetite, alternatively you can bar hop and cherrypick from each, making this the most sociable of feasts. Prices are extremely reasonable too, maybe 2.40€ for something any London cafe would screw you over for, were they even making something delicious on the premises in the first place.
We dined on pintxos every day, so engrained are they in the culture, sometimes from a homely corner cafe and sometimes from a specialist outfit with a regional reputation. In Vitoria the top venues include Sagartoki, El Toloño and perretxiCo, all offering creations with extra pizazz rather than just a dollop of seafood squirted on half a roll. The busiest place we tried was Bar Sport in San Sebastián where the queue at the bar was four deep even at the end of the lunchtime rush, such is their reputation. A large team worked a rustic production line to process the orders, to carry the plates and (out of sight) to assemble and cook, eventually delivering us half a crab with cheesy sludge in, the aforementioned sea urchin and a rather safer mushroom croquette.
Not only are there dozens of pintxo bars in town centres but most have the same layout, a long (long) bar down one side and a row of small tables on the other, with barely room to walk between. One side offers choice, the other somewhere to perch. In the suburbs land is cheaper so there's often more space, also many tables outside where the community gathers. These bars are generally open from dawn until well after dusk, evolving through the day from breakfast coffee to lunchtime snack to evening beers... like a coffee shop, cafe and pub rolled into one. We started all our mornings at the Viena Café where a selection of home-made pintxos sat under a cloche, always served with a smile, and I very much regret that the double decker tuna and cheesy-ham sandwich never made a reappearance.
🐙 I wasn't sure how I'd get on with my somewhat restricted palate but thankfully ham was everywhere, also cod and cheese but mainly ham, also I successfully dodged olives and everything squidlike, also whenever chicken came it was invariably a thin dry fillet, also on Day 1 I survived a starter of black pudding which turned out to be enormous, also Basque cheesecake is considerably tastier when it's genuinely Basque and I very much approve.
🥬 Vegetables are generally not a thing, potatoes excepted. The very idea of a side of something green is anathema in a cuisine more heavily based on meat, fish and sometimes a sauce, but often not.
🍔 Fast food is generally banished from city centres. For example Vitoria-Gasteiz (population 250,000) has only four McDonalds and five Burger Kings, all in the outer suburbs beyond the ring road.
🕑 Mealtimes are later than Britons might expect, the evening meal more of a late evening event. As for lunch we generally took this in the gap between 2pm and 4pm when a lot of shops and museums are closed, this also the perfect opportunity to sit down in the shade in the hottest part of the day. Checking the times on five of our restaurant receipts: 14:53, 15:15, 15:58, 16:32 and 16:45.
🍷 Wine is dirt cheap, which is one of the perks of living in a country that makes it. Bottles are barely 3€ in the supermarket, also when you order from the set menu a bottle of red wine is generally included. My three course lunch by Bilbao's transporter bridge cost 14.50€ and although all I really wanted was a glass, that came with a full bottle as well. Nobody even blinks if you leave some. Dining out in London now feels even worse value ever before.
🫗 A popular drink to order in a Basque bar is a kalimotxo (pronounced calimocho). It's a mix of red wine and cola and could be considered the cheap and cheery northern equivalent of sangria. In hot weather it's very refreshing, hence I enjoyed several over the holiday. I also downed a few glasses of the local aniseedy liqueur patxaran, to widespread social approval.
🍵 I struggled to make a cup of tea, first because the family home where we were staying didn't have any teabags, then because they didn't have a kettle, and ultimately because the only cups suitable for hot liquids were tiny and coffee-sized. I ended up making myself two small cups every morning.
🍎 On the last night of the holiday we treated ourselves to a night out at a cider house (or sagardotegi), a true local gastronomic tradition. Basque cider is a non-sparkling brew fermented from local apples, most of which comes from the hills above San Sebastián. The season begins with great festivity in mid-January and lasts until April, with aficionados often taking the opportunity to sample cider (and food) from different houses. Things are quieter in August but we booked in advance at Petretegi in Astigarraga, one of the more famous orchards where production dates back exactly500 years to 1526.
The scale of things was evident by the fact they have a 420-seater restaurant, a rustic timbered affair backed by rows of huge cider barrels. They keep the food simple by serving up a very set menu: first salt cod omelette, then T-bone steak, then local cheese with quince jelly and walnuts. But it's the cider where the theatre is, served not from a bottle on the table but direct from the barrels round the back. Whenever you want a drink you wander off into the nether regions, initially gasping at the scale of the operation, and hunt around for the cellarkeeper with his finger on the tap.
The approved method is to fire the cider out of the barrel and for each drinker to catch it in their glass. The distance the liquid has to travel helps to aerate it, and also adds a great deal of fun to the evening. Ideally you hold your glass on the slant, then remove it when you have about an inch of liquid so that another drinker can swoop in from behind and catch the flow. Across the evening the chosen barrel regularly changes, so you might follow up a fruity blend from cask 18 with a drier sample from silo 46 in the backroom. And if you end up chatting to everyone else while waiting for a drink, that's all part of the experience.
The Basque word for this is txotx (which if you've been paying attention today you should know how to pronounce). In many cider houses you have to wait for a shout of "txotx" before heading to the barrel but at Petretegi you can wander in at any time, ensuring more self-control is needed. We finally stumbled out just before midnight, very much appled-up, having sensibly booked accommodation at the foot of the hill.
⚖️ I have put on three pounds since going to Spain and it's not shifting.
