I know…I know...this is not a post about the mad week leading up to the big event…the wedding… and how it all went so off plan…so off plan in fact we had to draw up a whole new plan on the 11th hour…but I’ve tried now three times to start typing and got stuck. So just allow me to tell you what I can put down on screen and get my flow back, I should think once it starts rolling out of my fingertips I’ll type about it non-stop. Right now I feel like a naughty school girl who hasn’t finished her project but I promise to post it this week. In the meantime I really want to share the two cities we visited two weeks ago.
San Sebastián For A Pintxo Lunch
I can not tell you just how excited I have been about going to San Sebastián, so excited. It’s described as the food capital of Spain and it’s suppose to have the most Michelin star restaurants per square mile than anywhere else. Not that I think Michelin starred restaurants are the best but it leaves you with the impression the place is paved with good eateries and delicious Spanish produce awaiting you. You can see how it made my childlike enthusiasm reach fever pitch when we were driving into the city for a Spanish style pintxos lunch. Pintxos or pinchos are a variation on tapas, very often served on bread and traditionally has a cocktail stick through it, to keep it all together.
Driving Into San Sebastián In August Is Madness
Urmm…well it was a little frustrating to say the least trying to deal with the traffic mid morning, midweek, mid August! Madness to drive in. We drove around for over an hour in circles to find a car park that wasn’t full with queues around the block. Bikerboy’s patience was wearing thin and we started to make our way back to the small town we were staying in, Getaria. On the way out of the city through the craze of interconnecting roads we accidently ended up on the outskirts of the city by the university. We parked to get our bearings on the GPS, decided to give it one last shot to find a way of getting back into the city. Bikerboy found the article in the Guardian recommending to park for free around the university and catch the bus into the centre only 3 stops away. We did. After asking for some help from a French tourist at the bus stop doing the same. Should explain here, ‘I’ asked for help. In my experience men don’t stop to ask strangers for help with directions.
In our hotel in Getaria we were advised to eat in the old part where the Pintxos bars were laid thick between the narrow streets and that’s what we did. Only we forgot the map the hotel gave us, so once off the bus we headed for the sea front knowing that the old quarter of the city laid to our right and following our noses, well sort of, following where most people seemed to be heading, we passed the garden by the seafront and then it became apparent as you approached a very wide busy avenue where the narrow streets of the old city started. This area of the city was rammed with tourists.
The Old Quarter of the City for the Pintxos Bars
And this is when I wished I had done some homework as to where to eat, which bars to head to. Not dissimilar to the advice I would give someone visiting London so not to end up having lunch in Aberdeen Steak House. I walked into the city expecting to walk into any bar and eat delicious little morsels but that wasn’t quite the case. These crowded old narrow streets were rather run down, there were lots of closed bars, shop fronts closed, broken doorways, the place looked rather unloved, reminded me of the centre of Lisbon two years ago, and a bit smelly which did not entice Bikerboy at all.
You see I sort of didn’t care about the streets much, my head was full of what little pintxos I was going to discover inside, and that made me forgive the condition of the streets. At least at first it did but after we had popped our heads into quite a few of these little bars and kept seeing the not so appetising looking things on pieces of bread I began to feel rather deflated.
The Food
We decided to go into a bar on the corner of the wide avenue and chose a small selection of what they had, we were by now rather hungry. As you can see from our plates it wasn’t very successful. Between us we picked tortilla Española, well that one was all mine as Bikerboy hates eggs, slices of bread with different toppings, some with tuna, some with crab and more than one variety of croquettes.
Not the Tortilla Española I Know Of
I love…I adore Spanish tortilla and make a real mean one, still yet to transfer the recipe from the old blog to here but you’ll see how I take my tortilla Española very seriously. It has to be made with very good quality eggs, and a personal choice, I prefer with onions as well as the potatoes. The tortilla should be a good mixture of creamy eggs, starchy potatoes and sweetness from the onions. All of these should be in every mouthful giving you an overall balanced taste and most importantly leaving you with moreish aftertaste wanting the second bite. The tortilla I tried in this bar and a subsequent bar was not that at all, it had a strange floury aftertaste, couldn’t quite tell why but it didn’t taste of eggs nor potatoes though they appeared to contain both. It gave me the impression the tortilla had been thinned down, as you didn’t have the rich taste you have with a home cooked one, so I suspect these were very much commercially produced tortillas, and maybe flour added to bulk it up. Quite unpleasant.
All over Portugal and Spain you’ll come across croquettes containing whatever the cook fancies. Most of the time I will avoid café/restaurant made croquettes since the ones I’ve eaten home made takes some beating. We were however in the food capital of Spain and since there was little to entice Bikerboy who does not like eggy things or is bothered about things like Spanish ham or crab, I picked the croquettes, some with cheese and some meat. They were tasteless, eating very soft mush almost runny consistency of nothing, I think wallpaper paste would have a more distinctive taste. Now that we had taken the edge off the hunger with a couple of OK tasting tuna and crab on a slice of bread pintxos, we sat enjoying the ongoings of the promenade while finishing our drinks.
The Idea of Tapas or Pintxos Bars
I do realise the idea of a Tapas or Pintxos bar is that you take just one maybe two items that the bar do particular well and then move on to the next one, who will be known to make a different morsel really well and so it goes. For this you need a local guide, local knowledge and we were entering the pintxos bars as tourists and for that reason I expected some failings along the way but I wasn’t prepare on just how touristy most of these bars had become. Most of what we came across were appealing to the cheap trade, just think of those restaurants displaying photos of food on their doorway in the most touristy destinations and you’ll get some idea.
We stuck our noses into quite a few of these bars, and in most of these the food did not appeal, some of the pintxos were no more than some suspect colour paste on top of a slice of baguette. One of the pintxos I had was suppose to be crab but was mainly finely chopped lettuce…the crab must have remained in the ocean.
It Wasn’t All That Bad
After a few failed attempts of trying to eat something delicious Bikerboy was getting fed up and I decided to follow my foodie nose…bar with no photos, older customers, middle aged men with big bellies have a tendency to eat well… and look for expensive ingredients on the bar. We finally hit the jackpot with this bar at the end of San Jeronimo Street, called Ganbara, one look at what they were displaying and I knew I was in a good place.
A large display of wild mushrooms.
The very sought after porcini or ceps
And then this…the site of these said everything, Percebes or Goose Barnacle are a delicacy in Spain, extremely difficult to yank off the dangerous rocks of Northern Spain. They look like the feet of some sort of dinosaur, nothing like other shellfish, and from what I’ve read, though you can get other variation of goose barnacles in countries such as Canada, these ones with their distinctive red markings are native to Spain. I didn’t have any because I would be the only one eating them and I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy them to order a plate but I had arrived in a good bar.
I ordered some squid for me and prawns in garlic olive oil for Bikerboy because that’s what I could understand from the Spanish menu…the downside of not having laminated photo menus! They were cooked to order, and in the meantime we enjoyed a glass of vino. A very packed tiny bar with five serving from the tiniest bar space, no bigger than my wee kitchen. This was by now around 2.30pm and the hassle and bustle of lunch never let up. My squid was good, nothing spectacular but Bikerboy’s prawns were the sweetest nuggets you’ll taste. He had two servings of these.
I should have had these, baby squid with sweet onions, these were ordered by a couple next to us but unfortunately I was too full by then.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city, having a ride on a rickshaw which is actually a very good way of getting your bearings in a small city, whilst eating some delicious sorbets. The blackberry one was superb, tasted of pure ripe fruit as it should, from this place, Oiartzun:
Followed by the obligatory café sitting and people watching, do you love doing that? I do. We had such a laugh taking these photos in the café, I was trying to get Bikerboy to pose but not look like he was and not have his mouth open as if catching a fly…and then me trying really hard to smile but without showing a double chin which I’m very good at doing. It gave us the giggles for quite a while.
I’ll cross the street if I see a shop window selling some good looking chocolate or cakes or in fact anything food and Bikerboy will stop and admire a bike.
What We Thought of San Sebastian
Towards the end of the day our overall impressions of the city was far better than at the start of it. The newer shopping sections are cleaner and more attention has been paid to them, and we found corners of small parks and pretty old streets which made for pleasant walks. Having beaches right on the edge of a city this size also made it attractive as you could walk along it.
Bikerboy expected San Sebastian to be prettier than it was and I wasn’t expecting to be as touristy as it was…but then…what was I thinking going in the middle of August? I was also expecting to be lunching on endless five star food. I was being rather naive to arrive in a foodie city and not having done some homework beforehand…still…it made finding a good pintxos bar all the more appreciated.
