San Sebastián’s thriving tapas scene

La Cepa in San Sebastián

A very tiny, very gnarled old lady is sitting on a street corner in San Sebastián, ripping the heads off a pile of fresh anchovies and scraping out their guts with her fingernails. José Pizarro, a London-based, Spanish-born chef, could not be more excited. “I love this,” he says, elongating the word “love” by several syllables, as the woman pushes leftovers on to a pile of newspapers on the floor. “Her husband or her son will have fished these last night,” he explains. “Then she comes here, to the market, to sell them. This is one of my favourite things to eat, even raw,” grins Pizarro. Later today they will be fried with olive oil and slivers of garlic and eaten whole as a tapa.

Over the past five years, Pizarro, 38, has played a key role spreading the popularity of tapas beyond Spain, both as a partner in the renowned Brindisa group of British restaurants and as a contributor to The Book of Tapas, published earlier this year by Phaidon. Now in the process of setting up a new tapas restaurant in London, he has come here on a research mission, to eat all the tapas he can. “San Sebastián is definitely the most exciting place in Spain for tapas,” he says.

His enthusiasm and knowledge are endless – in the daily food market, La Bretxa, he explains how to cook cow’s nose (morros), how to find rare gooseneck barnacles in rough seas, how to make a gelatinous emulsion called pil pil with hake neck, olive oil and vinegar. He tells me which stall sells the best fish (Amania – the gills are bright red and the fish arranged to look like they’re dancing) as well as everything you could ever want to know about jamón (100 per cent Ibérico Bellota is best). How he remains so trim and cheerful is a mystery given how much he can eat and drink, and how little that means he sleeps.

The food market is fairly modern. “People say it’s a shame that it doesn’t look how it did in the past,” says Pizarro, pointing at the sleek market stalls. In fact, apart from churches, only a couple of the city’s buildings date from before 1813 when the town was razed during the Penisular War; it was prettily rebuilt in the 1830s and became quite grand in the 1840s when Queen Isabel started spending summers here. There’s even a square, Plaza de la Constitución, with beautiful painted and numbered balconies, where bullfights used to take place.

Chef José Pizarro at Casa Vergara

However, we are not here for architecture – we are here to eat. This small, frequently rainy, coastal town in northern Spain is home to more Michelin stars per head than anywhere else in the world (Michelin’s website recommends a total of 73 restaurants here). We have come to visit, not the upmarket restaurants, but the city’s extraordinary plethora of both hyper-modern and traditional tapas bars.

The old quarter, Parte Vieja, is stuffed with bars and restaurants, a few of which are sit-down places where you can linger over dishes such as whole turbot cooked with olive oil, parsley, garlic and vinegar. The majority, though, are small, packed-out bars where you can order a drink and something to eat standing up for just a few euros before moving on. Cold tapas are piled alluringly on platters at the bar and served then and there; hot ones have to be ordered. The food may be very traditional – perhaps skewers of anchovy, olive and pepper, called gildas, and a plate of slow-cooked pigs’ ears, orejas de cerdo. Or, as at a bar called Fuego Negro, it may be incredibly theatrical and playful: an “explosion” of pigeon (paloma tiro pum) – cooked pigeon breast with a tiny rice paper sign stuck in it, reading “PUM!” and fake blood painted on to the plate with beetroot, or a sheet of potato “paper” covered in prawns and balanced over a glass (the paper melts when hot soup is poured over the top).

This new style of tapas – influenced by the molecular gastronomy of chefs such as Ferran Adrià of El Bulli and Martin Berasategui, who has a restaurant in San Sebastián, and by nueva cocina vasca (Basque nouvelle cuisine) – is becoming increasingly popular both in and outside Spain, as consumers abroad become accustomed to patatas con chorizo and the humble tortilla. Whichever you choose in San Sebastián, it’s likely to be very good indeed. Because we are very deep in Basque country (display a Spanish flag in your car and you’re practically asking for a key to be dragged along the paintwork), tapas are called pintxos (pronounced “pinchos”) and belong to a slightly different tradition. They are also the source of serious pride round here – there are few places in the world that could rival this region for obsessiveness about food.

Nobody is quite sure why eating is so important here. Elena Arzak, one of the few female chefs in the world to hold three Michelin stars, is a friend of Pizarro and says: “All we know is that it is a huge part of our culture and always has been. These are things which we’ve been eating since always, that are the tastes of our childhoods.” She runs Arzak, a family restaurant, with her father Juan Mari. When we pop in for a few recommendations of dishes to try round town, they feed us a mind-blowingly inventive seven-course lunch and remind us to refer to San Sebastián as Donostia, its Basque name.

The best way to experience San Sebastián’s delicious indigenous food is on foot, mooching along from bar to bar, slowly becoming pleasantly full (you can have two pintxos and two drinks for around €10 in most places). Part of the idea is that the food not only tastes great but prevents you from getting drunk. One precaution against drunkenness is that beer is served in tiny glasses called zuritos and red wine is served diluted with cola and ice (though this can be undone by the Spanish habit of pouring vast quantities of spirits by hand, rather than using measures). “To drink, you must have food,” says Jesus Bustillo, another friend of Elena Arzak’s and a member of one of the city’s many gastronomic societies, as he pours glasses of the local wine Txakoli (pronounced “chac-o-lee”), a slightly fizzy, almost salty, light white wine that is served in small amounts, very cold, and knocked back in one. Served with a plate of Pizarro’s much-loved fried anchovies (anchoas fritas con ajo confitado), calamari (calamares a la Romana), or a plate of octopus cooked in smoked paprika (pulpo con pimentón de la Vera y aceite de oliva), plus some local thin green peppers, blackened and salted (guindillas fritas con sal), it is pretty heavenly. As Bustillo says: “It’s really hard to eat badly in San Sebastián”.

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A Basque bar crawl: The best ‘pintxos’ in San Sebastián’s old quarter

Ganbara Jatetxea

Great for traditional tapas and short, swift drinks. One end of the bar is always heaped with raw versions of whatever seasonal produce is being served at the other end.

San Jerónimo 21, www.ganbarajatetxea.com

Fuego Negro

Great if you’ve got pintxos fatigue and fancy something different – try crab and avocado with licorice ice cream or miniature burgers.

Calle 31 de Agosto, www.afuegonegro.com

La Cuchara de San Telmo

José Pizarro’s favourite, in part due to the risqué murals on the outside, this is the place to go for meaty pigs’ ears, moreish fried goat’s cheese, or salt cod and sweet caramelised onions.

Calle 31 de Agosto 28 / Corredor de San Telmo.

Casa Vergara

Run by Álvaro and Vera Manso, this large bar does award-winning pintxos, some old and some new – such as octopus with shiitake mushrooms and a spicy sauce from the Canary Islands.

Calle Mayor 21, www.casavergara.es

Izazpi

A good wine list and interesting food – try the huevos fritos rotos con patatitas paja, which is essentially just very good egg and chips; break the egg into the shards of salty fried potato. Simple but delicious.

Calle 31 de Agosto 25

La Cepa

A great-looking place and one of the better known traditional pintxos bars – worth going more for the ambience than the food.

Calle 31 de Agosto 7, www.barlacepa.com