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TABLE 1A
Fly smarter · Eat better · Drink deeper
Issue No. 1 · San Sebastián, Spain
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You arrive at San Sebastián’s Parte Vieja at 7pm and immediately understand why every serious food person eventually makes this pilgrimage. The old town is barely half a mile across, but the unspoken competition between its pintxos bars has been quietly raising the bar for fifty years. On a Tuesday in October, every place is packed. Nobody sits down. This is dinner here, and it is one of the great eating experiences on earth — and also, somehow, completely normal.
The ritual is simple: stand at the bar, point at what looks good, eat it in three bites, order txakoli — that sharp, slightly fizzy Basque white that exists in a category of its own — and move to the next bar. Repeat for three hours. No reservations. No menus. No performance. Just an ancient city that has been feeding itself this way since before anyone thought to write about it.
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Fly into Bilbao on Avios — one of the cleanest business class redemptions in Europe right now
San Sebastián doesn’t have its own airport. The move is Bilbao (BIO), 60km away, served by Iberia. Fly Iberia business class from JFK using Avios — transferable 1:1 from Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards — at 34,000 Avios each way on off-peak dates. That’s a lie-flat seat over the Atlantic for what most people spend on a domestic flight. From there, a 90-minute drive or a bus to the Parte Vieja, and you’re eating anchovy pintxos before your checked bag has left the carousel.
Air France Flying Blue — which transfers 1:1 from both Amex and Chase — prices the same route at around 40,000 miles business class, often with better availability. Turkish Miles&Smiles (via Citi ThankYou or Capital One transfers) is worth checking for Iberia metal and sometimes comes in lower. The trick: search Iberia’s own website for availability, then transfer points once you’ve confirmed space exists.
The card: Chase Sapphire Reserve earns 3x on travel and dining and transfers directly to Avios at 1:1. Put your next three months of restaurant spending on it and you’re most of the way to a one-way business class seat. The math on this hobby only works if you run it honestly, and that math works here.
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Bar Txepetxa Hidden Gem
The smallest bar in the old town does one thing: anchovies, eight ways, each iteration more technically precise than the last. The fish come from their own supply in the Cantabrian Sea, which is the kind of detail that sounds like marketing until you taste the difference.
→ Order the anchovy with sea urchin cream. Pair it with a pour of Ameztoi Txakoli. This is the combination.
Borda Berri Wine Bar
A narrow room with a wine list that has no business being this interesting in a pintxos bar — Spanish naturals, serious old-vine Riojas, Txakolis from producers you won’t find anywhere else. The food is meant to be paired rather than grabbed, which puts it in a different category from most of its neighbours.
→ Ask what they’re drinking behind the bar. The staff here actually drink well and they will tell you honestly.
Bar Bergara Restaurant
In the Gros neighbourhood across the river from the tourist circuit, Bergara competes annually for the title of best pintxos bar in Gipuzkoa and frequently wins. The crowd is more local, the prices are lower, and you can actually reach the bar — three things that matter more than they should.
→ The mushroom and foie gras pintxo changes with the season. Ask which version they’re running before you order anything else.
Mercado de la Bretxa Quick Bite
The covered market where the city’s chefs do their morning shopping. Get here before 9am — the pintxos bars operating inside serve the same quality as the evening spots but you’re standing next to the people who cook the serious food in this city while they do their daily rounds.
→ The jamón counter on the ground floor. Don’t order. Just point at whatever they’re slicing and eat it standing up.
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Ameztoi Getariako Txakolina Rubentis
Rubentis Ameztoi · Getaria, Basque Country · NV
Txakoli is the wine of the Basque Country and Ameztoi’s Rubentis is the most complete expression of what it can be — a pale rosé made from Hondarrabi Beltza grapes grown on steep coastal slopes above the Bay of Biscay. It arrives almost salmon-pink, with tiny persistent bubbles and an aroma that is simultaneously briny, floral, and apple-sharp. The first sip on a warm evening in the Parte Vieja is one of those experiences that gets filed under “things that can’t be replicated anywhere else.”
The acidity is searingly high and the alcohol low — around 11% — which makes it the perfect wine to drink through an entire pintxos crawl without losing your footing or your judgment. Its highest calling is with anchovies: the salt of the fish and the acid of the wine create something that feels designed rather than accidental. The Basques pour it from a great height to build the froth. If you see a bartender doing this theatrically, they’re doing it right.
Find it at any wine shop in San Sebastián for around €12, or through Spanish wine specialists in the US (Despaña, José Pastor Selections). The current release drinks beautifully. If Txakoli is new to you, this is the bottle that makes it click.
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How San Sebastián Actually Eats
The tourists eat pintxos at 6pm. The locals eat at 8:30, which means if you arrive at the tourist hour you’ll be sharing space with people who fly home tomorrow and the pintxos on the bar have been sitting since 5. Come later. The quality difference between 6pm and 9pm is not subtle — it’s the difference between what a kitchen does when they’re warming up and what they do when the city is watching.
The second mistake: staying in the Parte Vieja all night. The Gros neighbourhood across the Urumea river has equally serious bars, fewer people who are photographing their food, and better prices. Bar Bergara is there. Bodega Donostiarra is there, serving a €4 glass of house red that outperforms most expensive bottles elsewhere. The bridge is a five-minute walk and the other side of it is the city that locals actually live in.
What tourists almost universally miss: the mid-morning txikiteo. At around 11am, the city’s workers take a break and gather at bar counters for a single glass of wine and a pintxo. This is not drinking. This is a deeply civilised ritual of pausing the morning that has been going on here since before anyone thought to call it a ritual. Sit at a bar in Gros at 11am on any weekday. Order txakoli. Eat whatever is on the counter. Watch the city run itself. It costs €3 and is one of the better things you can do in Europe.
One more thing the guidebooks don’t mention: Txakoli is not the only wine. Borda Berri and a handful of other serious bars pour natural wines from across Spain and France that would be at home in Paris or Copenhagen. Don’t default to Txakoli all night just because it’s the local option. The local option is what you drink when you get there and when you leave. In between, drink what’s interesting.
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TAP Air Portugal now routes through Lisbon to Bilbao, making a Basque Country + Lisbon two-city trip easier and cheaper to book on points than it has ever been — stack both destinations in one redemption. |
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The annual Concurso de Pintxos de Gipuzkoa happens each October — timing a trip around it means eating the year’s best new creations at their debut, judged by the people who take this more seriously than most countries take their national sport. |
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Arzak just shortened its tasting menu — book the 1pm seating and you’ll finish with enough daylight left for the evening pintxos circuit, which is the correct way to structure the best food day you will have this year. |
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