San Sebastián: the Basque Country’s bay of plenty

As a Michelin-starred London chef decamps to San Sebastián for the summer, Frankie McCoy is hot on her heels, fork in hand
Savour the moment:a view over the city
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Frankie McCoy2 September 2016

If you’ve ever queued for a new restaurant, Instagrammed “that” cult dish or taken the vaguest interest in good food, you need to get on a flight to San Sebastián now. Not only does the city in Spain’s Basque region have more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than anywhere else in Europe, but even a cheap plate from the dingiest of hole-in-the-wall bars is spectacular.

Thanks to countless top-notch pintxos bars, a quick snack is often a near-Michelin mouthful — and only for three or four euros. But a trip to San Sebastián right now isn’t just another foodie pilgrimage — there’s an extra level of gastronomy involved. Hélène Darroze, two-Michelin-starred chef at The Connaught in Mayfair, has decamped to San Sebastián’s Hotel Maria Cristina until the end of October.

The Belle Epoque-era building is a pretty fantastic setting. Not dissimilar to the sleek, softly lit Connaught inside, it has the significant bonus of being less than 10 minutes’ walk from the beach — and three minutes from the gastronomic glories of the Old Town, where the pintxos bars lie.

My boyfriend and I have barely checked in before I’m interrogating Ana, the lovely concierge, as to the best place for a pintxo or six before our Darroze meal that evening. I’m clearly not the first to do this: Ana whips out a numbered map, showing not only the best pintxos joints in town but the dishes they do best: from txuleton steak at Bar Nestor to Bar Martinez’s pimiento relleno de bonito (stuffed pepper). She also tells us what we will hear at least four times over the next 48 hours: “the best cheesecake in the world” is at La Viña. It’s like a gourmet treasure hunt — and I’m ready to go scavenging.

The streets are heaving but we manage to find a perch at Casa Urola for grilled octopus: a hefty skewer, grilled to perfection, on sour-sweet cabbage and covered with breadcrumbs. Even better, two of those, plus croquetas and two glasses of decent rioja, come to less than €20.

Conscious that we need to keep our appetites for the substantial dinner that awaits, we drag ourselves away. Hotel Maria Cristina offers bicycles for those who wish to cycle along the coastline, and as 2016’s European Capital of Culture there’s no shortage of things to do, from music festivals to the San Telmo Museoa, a cultural history museum. But when the sun’s shining and you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, it’s too tempting just to hit the beach.

The old town is Pinxtos central
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So, thoroughly relaxed — and Britishly sunburnt — we head to dinner. There are seven- and nine-course menus available but we opt instead for the bespoke option, created by Hélène that night. A cutesy gimmick helps us choose from four mains: we’re presented with a bag of walnuts (a Basque regional speciality), each with a different main printed on it. I end up with rabbit, my boyfriend a truly fantastic hake dish with octopus and clams. But there are about nine courses before that: amuse-bouche of anchovy croquetas and a jamon-filled wafer shell; a seriously intense martini glass of oyster, white bean purée and caviar; tuna sorbet in a delicious puddle of gazpacho; mackerel and almond cream...

Hélène Darroze at the market
Jose Manuel Bielsa

At some point a cheese trolley comes past and we end up with delicate sheep’s milk cheeses (and, strangely, Stilton) before two puddings. I could swear the chocolate mousse has a Parmesan foam on top, although the copious amounts of Ribeiro and Priorat wines could be clouding my judgment.

We wake up the next day still full — it would take something pretty amazing to make us eat again, but that’s hardly a problem in San Sebastián. At least this time we have to put in some effort ourselves: the hotel is also home to a cookery school. Here, chefs Mateus Mendes and Agus Araquistáin promise to teach even those unable to poach an egg (me) how to make five of the Old Town’s renowned dishes: a “mini huerta” (vegetable garden), pulpo con membrillo (octopus with quince), carrilleras en salsa (veal cheeks), brandada de bacalhao (saltfish emulsion) and that aforementioned “best cheesecake in the world”.

 Frying octopus

There’s molecular gastronomy here — dehydrated mushroom soil for the vegetable garden, basil and wasabi “caviar” on the saltfish — but rustic simplicity too in the veal cheeks cooked in rioja for three hours to eye-watering richness. It turns out that, prosaically, the cheesecake is made with Philadelphia cream cheese, and we somehow get through three bottles of olive oil in the course of our four-hour lesson, before eating our beautiful creations. It’s all fantastic; even if I probably wouldn’t recreate that vegetable garden in my shoebox of a kitchen, I’ve definitely learned some serious haute cuisine techniques. Hélène had better watch her back.

Cookery school
Jose Manuel Bielsa

We’ve barely started to digest before an evening pintxos tour. Our guide Lourdes takes us to six places where the food is so brilliant we magically find more room in our stomachs. A standout is Zeruko, with its modernist, molecular pintxos such as “la Hoguera” (the bonfire): saltfish grilled by yourself on a mini barbecue, with a test tube of liquid salad. And finally, after having made it ourselves, we get to try La Viña’s cheesecake. And you know what? I think mine is better.

There’s far too much to eat in San Sebastián for a two-day trip (I never do get my Bar Nestor txuleton), never mind to see. Better people than us would sacrifice a meal or two for some Basque culture. But truthfully, Hélène’s hake and those veal cheeks will stay emblazoned in my mind (and certainly on my hips) far longer than any museum exhibit.

Details: San Sebastián

Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Biarritz from £40 return. From there it is an hour’s drive or an hour and 20 minutes by train to San Sebastián.

Hotel Maria Cristina, a Luxury Collection Hotel (00 34 943 43 76 00; luxurycollection.com/mariacristina) offers doubles from €250, room only.

Hélène Darroze at Hotel Maria Cristina (helenedarroze-sansebastian.com) will be open for lunch and dinner Wednesday-Sunday until October 30. The restaurant offers three different menus, from €98 per person.

San Sebastián Food cookery school, (00 34 943 42 11 43; sansebastianfood.com), within the hotel, offers cookery classes for €155 per person, and guided pintxos tours for €110 per person.

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