Yesterday we went a bit silly, but before I tell you why, let’s take a step back. The reason one comes to San Sebastian is to eat. You can do that eating in two ways. The first, if you have the bank balance, is at one of the many multi award winning restaurants located here. There are 11 Michelin star restaurants not to mention all of the others that are on the list of best restaurants in the world. Apparently, no other place in the world except Kyoto, Japan has this many top restaurants in such a great concentration. This meant we had to book in to one for lunch and we chose Mugaritz. They must have known we were coming because the desert that day was a chocolate tasting presented in a sort of Tower of Babel, each level with a different chocolate from a different origin.
We had barely recovered from that amazing, multicourse lunch when we had to meet up with our guide for a group tour of the second kind of food you should eat while in San Sebastian; pintxos. In the old town of San Sebastian, there are dozens of small restaurants that present a bar covered in small plates of food. Every bar specialises in different kinds of pintxos. These are accompanied by a number of different local drinks, most commonly a Txakoli, a dry slightly sparkling white wine from the region. You can go around and make up your own pinxtos tour, popping into different spots and trying whatever looks good. Pick spots that are busy and you pay when you are done. This goes on until very late and we went to bed very full and woke up the next morning still full.
When we discovered Oiartzun though, we remembered that we have second stomachs reserved for special foods like hot chocolate and pastries so we walked right in. The display is unbelievable and over the top, cookies overflowing in all directions. The hot chocolate was a Cola Cao which is a sugary drink that claims to have chocolate in it that is very popular in households across the country. How a city with some of the best food in the world can even let Cola Cao into its historic centre confuses me. The pastries more than made up for it though.
Verdict: Pastry heaven. Pasteleria Oiartzun, Ijentea kalea, 2. Bajo, San Sebastian
