Tuesday 26 July 2022 12:23 pm

San Sebastian: The Michelin capital of the world

Life & Style Editor

Throughout the confinement of the pandemic we dreamed of the day travel restrictions would finally ease. This year that wish came true – but the monkey’s paw twitched.

While we are allowed to fly almost anywhere – even Japan and Korea, some of the strictest countries for Covid restrictions, have welcomed tourists back – but actually getting anywhere… that’s a different story.

The combination of pent-up demand, soaring costs, runway-melting heat and chronic staff shortages have turned the world’s biggest airports into endless, angry queues. So what’s a City-worker to do, as those all-important August days approach?

London City Airport is your friend – accessible from Bank in less than 25 minutes, it has remained, fairly miraculously, fully staffed all summer. You can glide through security in 20 minutes and you don’t even need to remove liquids and laptops from your bag as you pass through security.

With more leisure routes than you’d think, around three quarters of flights from City are run by British Airways CityFlyer, which means you not only get BA service, but also a guaranteed aisle or window seat – the planes are all in the 2-2 configuration – and complimentary alcohol throughout the plane, rather than just in business class.

Once seen as a predominantly business venture, CityFlyer had expanded its tourism schedule, including London’s only direct flight to the Basque city of San Sebastian.

Nestled on the extreme north east tip of Spain in the Basque region, a 30 minute drive from France and an hour from Bilbao, San Sebastian is a bucket-list destination for anyone serious about the restaurant scene.

It’s a gastronomic paradise with more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than anywhere in the world (there are 11 in an area of less than 200,000 people, including a trio of three starred restaurants, compared with London’s 74, five of which have three stars).

The most famous are the family dynasty restaurant Arzak and Martin Berasategui’s eponymous restaurant a short drive from town, both as globally respected as Copenhagen’s Noma or Lima’s Central – expect waiting lists of weeks or months if you hope to bag a table.

We landed in San Sebastian fairly early and met up with our guide Amaia, who suggested we take a trip up to Monte Igueldo, a peak that overlooks San Sebastian’s graceful curve of perfect sandy beaches, which can be reached via a 100- year-old funicular.

“No thank you, Amaia,” we said. “Take us to the nearest pintxos bar.”

While the peak is no doubt beautiful, San Sebastian is famed for its pintxos, small bar snacks, often skewered and served on bread.

While you can find them across northern Spain – Barcelona’s Carrer de Blai in El Poble-Sec is known for its “pinchos” – San Sebastian is their spiritual home.

The Old Town is the best place to look for them, its winding streets (which look a bit like those in Barcelona, with a dash of French je ne sais quoi) full of bars that spill out onto the pavement.

Amaia led us on a merry tour of some of her favourite haunts, a series of unpronounceable places with altogether too many letter ‘x’s in their names.

While I’ve always been disappointed with Carrer de Blai’s pinchos, which manage to feel both stale and sweaty at the same time, the best of San Sebastian’s pintxos are prepared with real care and attention.

We had anchovies with pickled peppers, oily curls of chorizo, delicate croquetas, neat stacks of goats’ cheese. The list gets hazier as we moved from bar to bar, each round of pintxos washed down with a caña (just under a half pint of lager). I remember pepper stuffed with… tuna? Something involving eel.

As afternoon dragged into evening and the sun swung down over the neo-gothic Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, we continued to wander the Old Town, stopping off at the impressive Konstituzio Plaza (where the surrounding buildings all bear numbers showing where you could once rent the balcony to watch bullfights below), and ending up at a punk bar, chatting to locals with inexcusable haircuts.

“You must visit Real Sociedad while you’re here,” said one of them.

So we did, picking up tickets for a friendly against Toulouse the next day. The Reale Arena is a modern, 40,000 seat stadium within walking distance of the town centre. Toulouse won 1-0 in what might have been the worst game of football ever played, but get tickets to a La Liga match and this stadium will be jumping.

Having crossed pintxos off my list, I wanted to try some traditional Basque dishes. For this we drove to the nearby town of Hondarribia, which butts up against the French border; from here you can take a 10-minute ferry and relax on a French beach for the afternoon, or while away the day in the sleepy town centre.

Right on the seafront is Arraunlari Berri, a high-end restaurant serving fish fresh from the boat, scarlet prawns that are to die for, and stews that are typical of the region (Basque country has a similar climate to the UK so they love a stew here).

Kupela, meanwhile, is a traditional Basque restaurant, which means… well, more grilled fish and stew. This is hearty food rather than haute cuisine, a place where the menu tops out at €22, but it’s a great introduction to the local gastronomy.

We tried kokotxas, a stew made with “hake cheeks”, actually a fatty section of the throat located directly behind the gills, cooked in a thick white wine and salsa verde sauce.

Elsewhere on the table were a mountain of monkfish medallions, huge prawns, hake with potato, grilled octopus, squid ink croquetas. This is the life.

While you might think locals in the Michelin capital of the world might wash all this down with a crisp sauvignon blanc, the tipple of choice here is cider.

There are around 300 cider houses dotted throughout the Basque region, the largest being the Saizar Sidrería, which should be at the top of your San Sebastian to-do list. Here you can take a tour of the cider-making facilities, where 2m bottles are produced each year.

Vast barrels run the length of the huge facility and, armed with your own glass, you can try them at will. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though – to pour you have to untap one of the barrels, shouting “txotx” (pronounced “choch”) as you do, which sends a jet of cider spraying out, which you’re tasked with catching in your glass.

Once the stream is loose, you’re not supposed to turn it off until everybody has had their fill, so a conga line of cider drinkers forms, with the locals expertly catching every drop.

“Txotx,” I shouted confidently, as a stream of yellow liquid sprayed across my shorts. The cider here isn’t like our English cider – it’s virtually flat and quite bitter, with the cider-makers trying to get the sugar content as low as they can. It’s certainly moreish though and with bottomless top-ups for less than €10 I’m surprised it’s not packed with rowdy stag dos.

In fact the sprawling 300-cover food hall is made up almost exclusively of locals tucking into absurdly large cod omelettes and grilled fish and vast, fatty steaks.

After all that food you need a place to rest your head. In San Sebastian itself I stayed in a perfectly respectable NH Collection business hotel but if you want to push the boat out, the Villa Magalean in Hondarribia is stunning. With just eight rooms, it’s a glorious townhouse filled with private terraces and stained glass windows and original artworks.

Just make sure you set an alarm if you have an early flight, because after all that food and cider you may find yourself sleeping late.