Lively taste-bud sensation

Published May 14, 2013

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San Sebastian - It’s past opening time at Goiz Argi, but the shutters are still down. Advertised trading times for San Sebastian’s famous pintxo bars, the Basque equivalent of a tapas joint, are to be taken with a pinch of salt. But with so many of them dotted around the streets of the old town, there’s no danger of going hungry. Our guide, Englishman Jon Warren, of tour company San Sebastian Food, ducks under the metal grill and gets the owner to open up.

Warren gave up his career in London’s finance sector and moved here after experiencing the quality of the gastronomy during a one-night stopover in 2002. Established in 2009, San Sebastian Food grew out of Warren’s habit of giving dining tips to guests while working at Villa Soro hotel in the city. And with half of Spain’s three-Michelin-starred restaurants and dozens of high-class pintxo bars in the city, he wasn’t short of a recommendation or two.

Almost as soon as the shutters are pulled up, the bar fills with hungry diners. On Warren’s advice we eschew the platters of potato tortilla, morcilla (black pudding made with rice) and txangurro (spider crab tartlets) laid out at the crowded bar and instead choose from the cooked-to-order “pintxo caliente” menu on which the real house specialities are to be found.

Pintxo is Basque for “spike”, and many dishes are served on toothpick-sized wooden skewers. The plancha grill sizzles with the best-selling brocheta de gambas. This classic pintxo presents griddled prawns with a delicious sweet and sour garlic, red, green pepper and onion vinaigrette, served on a crunchy baguette. We wolf them down, discarding our paper napkins and skewers on the floor in the accepted manner. Our bill is totted up based on what we say we’ve had to eat and drink and what the barman can recall serving us. Mistakes are bound to be made, but with most plates costing just e2-3 (R23 to R36), it all evens up over the evening.

We rejoin the crowds wandering the flagstoned Calle de Fermí Calbetó, home to a number of highly rated bars. It’s before 7pm and we’ve started our bar crawl early to avoid the real crush later in the evening.

In a little over two hours we hit half a dozen more places. We sample plump Galician mussels in a light tomato sauce, and mayonnaise and salsa-drenched patas bravas at Mejillonera. At Gandarias, the Solomillo (rare sirloin steak and baked green pepper with a liberal sprinkling of rock salt on bread) is simple and stunning; and I could live on the Carrillera de Ternera at La Cuchara de San Telmo. Each bar has something it does well and with Warren’s insider knowledge we find it.

At the La Brexta fish market our guide is chef Alex Barcenilla of Ziaboga restaurant. Each stall- holder tries to out-do the next with beautifully arranged displays. At one, the fish is so dazzlingly fresh that it seems to leap from the slab.

Barcenilla points out some monkfish with bellies slashed to expose their black innards, a sign that the fish will be tender. We buy some goosefoot barnacles, costing more than e100 a kilo, the price a reflection of the perilous method of harvesting them from Galacian cliffs. We take them back to the restaurant where they’ll form part of a long, lazy lunch overlooking the Bay of Pasajes.

In the kitchens of Ziaboga, Alex shows me how to prepare the classic Basque dish of merluza en salsa verde (hake in green sauce).

Lunch proper begins with more hake, this time the chins, a much prized part of the fish that fetched over e50 a kilo in the market. They’re served three ways: sautéed, pan fried in flour, and pil pil – slow-cooked in olive oil to release their natural gelatin, which creates a thick sauce that bubbles in the pan making a “pil pil” sound.

Alex trained with Pedro Subijana, one of the leading lights of the new Basque cuisine movement of the 1970s. And it’s to Subijana’s three-Michelin-star Akelarre that we head for dinner.

As a canapé, we’re presented with a tray of hotel bathroom products and instructed to eat them. Fortunately, the liquid soap is tomato gel, the sponge is made of almond, the tub of hand lotion contains a local goat cheese and the purple mouthwash is champagne with pomegranate.

There are many reasons to visit San Sebastian. A beautiful belle époque city arranged around the sandy, crescent shaped Playa de la Concha. This includes surfing, shopping at the upmarket boutiques, the international film festival, or taking part in the Tamborrada, a 24-hour drumming festival held every January. I could take or leave all that – just show me to the next pintxo bar. – The Independent on Sunday

San Sebastian Food, see sansebastianfood.com offers Pinxtos Tours from e85 , and cookery lessons from e75.

More information: sansebastianturismo.com

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