San Sebastián, Spain

Memorable: Dishes being prepared at Gandarias in San Sebastián

An hour west of Bilbao in northern Spain, a ghost of mine lies in the town of San Sebastián. Exactly a year ago there on New Year’s eve I was asked to leave a bar for the first time in my life. To add insult to injury, I ended up in bed, sober and hungry, by 11.15pm.

I returned this year to speak at the recent Gastronomika festival about the future of restaurant service, an invitation that led me back to the tapas bars of the cobbled streets in the charming old town – and to the memory of what happened last time.

I had enjoyed a great fish lunch at Elkano in Getaria, a small fishing village 15km further west, and I decided to visit a few tapas bars in San Sebastián to see in the stroke of midnight. My first and, it was to prove, only stop was the Dickens bar, where I enjoyed one of its renowned gins and tonic. This was about 10.15pm and the bar was strangely quiet. A few minutes later the barman, very politely, asked me to leave as, it transpired, he was going to celebrate the new year with his family.

So, it transpired, were nearly all the owners of the city’s many tapas bars and restaurants (35 are listed on a map of the old town alone). I walked around in rather desultory fashion before returning to my hotel. For the first time in many years I even contemplated raiding the minibar, but didn’t.

On my more recent visit I was saved from similar embarrassment by the intervention of two Englishmen. The first was Tim Warrillow, a fellow judge in my other duty at Gastronomika – the gin and tonic competition. This was sponsored by Fever-Tree drinks, which Warrillow co-founded and which makes innovative mixers. Spain is now Fever-Tree’s biggest export market thanks to the late artist Richard Hamilton, who took several that he had bought at his local Waitrose as a present for his friend, Ferran Adrià of el Bulli. Adrià started using them and the tonic water that proved good enough for him was soon good enough for every other Spanish bar and restaurant.

After David Rios, barman at Café Kobuk in Bilbao, had received a €3,000 cheque for his prize-winning gin and tonic, I headed for the exit in need of tapas and a glass of sherry, only to find my route blocked by a figure with a notebook and pen in hand.

The man was Jon Warren who, after coming to San Sebastián to work as a waiter, discovered he so enjoyed giving wine and food recommendations to the city’s many visitors that he founded San Sebastián Food, using local knowledge to create culinary experiences. I decided to put Warren to the test as the conference was taking place in Gros, a part of the city I know less well. We struck gold within 200 metres without spending a cent. Bodega Donostiarra comprises a wine shop and adjacent bar but it is the unchanged interior of the former that immediately charmed me. Wine was stored everywhere on dark wooden shelves. Two men were behind an old counter chatting and putting the world to rights.

Next door a great many glasses of good wine were being enjoyed over racións of ham, alongside plates of two of this bar’s other specialities, bonito tuna and fresh anchovies. I would have lingered but, to keep with the wandering spirit of San Sebastián, we walked round the corner to Hidalgo 56, the tapas bar of chef Juan Mari Humada, renowned for its ancho ahumado, smoked fresh anchovy. I will always remember it as my introduction to morros rebozados, beer-coated slivers of beef cheeks served with a tangy caper sauce. Equally memorable was Warren’s recommendation for the following evening, dinner at Gandarias, located at the corner of two cobbled streets in the old town.

Here my biggest challenge was to find somewhere to leave my glasses and plates before walking through from the crowded tapas bar and into the restaurant. Once seated in a simply decorated dining room with a grill in one corner and a large, wooden meat fridge in another, a team of waitresses, led by Ane, made everyone in our party feel better. Ceps with garlic and parsley; a grilled rib of beef; and a 2007 Bierzo Valtuille ensured that none of us went to bed hungry that night.

nicholas.lander@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/lander

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Details

Hidalgo 56, Paseo Colón 15, tel: +34 94 327 9654

Bodegas Donostiarra, Calle Pena y Goni 13, tel: +34 94 301 138

San Sebastián Food, www.sansebastianfood.com

Gandarias, www.restaurantegandarias.com