San Sebastian food coma

In some ways, I shouldn't write this post, because it will encourage people to go to San Sebastian, and I'm not sure I want to necessarily do that. Being the city with the highest per capita Michelin stars in the world (what a good KPI that is!), it is a foodie magnet, but it is a surprisingly untouristy place, and let's hope it stays that way.

Our favourite person on the trip was undoubtedly Miguel, the owner of the small city centre Pension Amalur. Despite the fact that he spoke about 3 words of English, and we relied on the bad Spanish I learnt in South America, his hospitality shone through, and we all wanted to give him a cuddle at the end. We were a bit suspicious when he recommended we go to a hamburger joint round the corner from the pension, as we had arrived around 11pm, but it turned out to be foodie enough to warrant some photos.

We never did note down the name of the place, but it is just off Calle de San Martin in the Old Town. You may also recognise it from the slightly aggressive looking waitress who looked like she would kill you at any moment. No fries, no sides, but you can order more or less anything with your perfectly cooked medium burger. Mine was with mushroom and scrambled egg, a combination which should be in burger joints the world over:

San Sebastian itself is only a tiny little place, we more or less walked around the entire place in a day. The food market we visited at Mercado de la Bretxa was not quite as impressive as the ones we visited in Barcelona, but I really wouldn't complain if I had it on my doorstep:

But getting down to business, one of the primary reasons people go to the Basque Country is to sample their pintxos, the Basque version of tapas. There are literally rows and rows of little pintxos bars all around the Old Town, the tradition being that you have a pintxo and a beer at one, and move on. Now that's what I call a bar crawl! We had much trouble controlling Eugene's enormous appetite, we would always say we will try 1 or 2 between us at each bar, but end up with multiple plate fulls. Honestly I think this was the first time I was literally overwhelmed by food, and I am normally proud of my very unfemale appetite:

By far the best pintxo bar we found was La Fuego Negro right next to the big church in the Old Town. Immediately from the decor you could see it was a trendier version of the traditional bar, with colanders used as lampshades and blackboards and chalk for you to graffiti in the bathrooms. Two other things also set it apart: the pintxos were very inventive, including combinations such as almond coffee with sweetbread fritters and pork with vanilla foam, but most importantly, everything was made to order, a vast change from most pintxos bars which had food sitting there for hours on end. We visited this place 3 times in the space of 24 hours, I think the waiters were starting to get worried that we would never leave:

You can't unfortunately fly direct into San Sebastian, which probably explains the low tourist numbers. Like most people, we flew into Bilbao and did the hour's drive, and we found that Bilbao seems to have given up on food, probably because of its close neighbour's sophisicated offering. We walked endlessly around to find any sort of interesting eatery still open, but we somehow ended our foodie trip in a branch of KFC. Yes, we felt thoroughly dirty afterwards. Thank goodness for the Guggenheim then, which was the only saving grace in our short time in Bilbao.

And yes, you may have noticed that I discovered Picasa in this post. Good way to disguise the photos taken in poorer light!