What to Eat in San Sebastián

Eight things. Order them across an evening and you will have eaten the Basque Country properly.

1. The gilda

Start here. An olive, a salted anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper, skewered together on a stick. Three ingredients, no bread, about €2.

It matters because it is widely held to be the original pintxo — San Sebastián, the 1940s, often traced to Casa Vallés. The name comes from the 1946 Rita Hayworth film Gilda: the joke was that the combination was salty, a little spicy and hard to resist, like the character.

It is also a genuinely great mouthful — sharp, salty, vinegary — and it wakes your palate up for everything after it.

2. Txuleta

The aged beef chop, cooked over coals, served rare and sliced. The Basque Country does this better than almost anywhere, using older cattle than most cuisines consider ideal, which is exactly where the flavour comes from.

At a pintxo bar you will meet it as a slice on bread. As a full chuletón it is a restaurant dish for two or more, and worth building an evening around if you eat beef.

3. Kokotxas

Hake cheeks — the small, gelatinous pieces from under the jaw, usually served al pil-pil in an emulsified garlic and oil sauce, or lightly battered.

This is the local delicacy in the truest sense: a cut most cuisines discard, turned into something with a texture unlike anything else. If you want to eat the thing the city actually prizes rather than the thing tourists photograph, this is it.

4. Bacalao

Salt cod, and it appears in several forms — al pil-pil, a la vizcaína in a red pepper sauce, or shredded into a brandada. It is the historical backbone of Basque cooking, from the centuries when Basque fleets fished the North Atlantic and salted what they caught.

5. Anchovies

Anchoas cured in salt, or boquerones in vinegar — two different things and both worth ordering. The cured ones from the Cantabrian coast are among the best in the world and they are on every counter here, usually on bread with something sweet or sharp to cut them.

6. Tortilla

Spanish omelette, potato and egg, and in the Basque Country it should be barely set in the middle. A firm, dry tortilla is a failure. Every bar has one, most bars are fine at it, and a few are famous for it.

7. Txakoli

Not food, but you will drink it with all of the above. The local white: bone dry, faintly sparkling, low in alcohol, and poured from a height into a wide glass to knock the bubbles into life.

Basque cider — sagardoa — gets the same high pour and is worth ordering once for the experience even if the wine suits you better.

8. Basque cheesecake

The famous one, and it has a precise origin: created in 1988 by Santiago Rivera at La Viña in San Sebastián. Baked hot enough to burn the top, with almost no flour, so it collapses into something between a cheesecake and a set custard.

It travelled. You will now find versions of it in Tokyo, New York and most of Europe, and it started in one bar in this city, about forty years ago.

What to skip

Nothing, honestly — but two notes.

Do not judge a bar by its counter. The elaborate cold pintxos with prawns balanced on things are built to look good under lights. The best food is on the board behind the bar, hot and made to order. Every guide on this site says this because it is the single most useful thing to know here.

Do not eat six things at one bar. One or two, then move — see how to order.

If you want it sequenced for you

Which bar for the kokotxas, which for the txuleta, which one’s tortilla is the one people queue for — that is what a guided evening is actually selling. The honest verdict on tours covers whether it is worth $121 to you.

See guided food tours