The Real Basque Way: San Sebastian, Beyond the Stars

The industry built around the city’s culinary reputation – iconic pintxos, abundant seafood, avant-garde presentations – has certainly helped nurture local talent and has also attracted kitchen luminaries from outside the Basque Country for decades. You can’t swing a flounder around here without hitting a name-brand chef. But equally exciting things are happening in San Sebastian’s backstreets. Here, the “Basque Way” is less a set of iconic dishes and dazzling cooking skills and more a way of experiencing food that revolves around seasonality, quality ingredients, and a commitment to culinary excellence. On this full-day tour, we will track this way of eating and cooking and its expression through both tradition and innovation. We’ll start our day with the most perfect tortilla imaginable – both crunchy and oozy at the same time – at a busy locals’ cafe. We’ll then visit a neighborhood market where chefs and grannies line up to buy fresh kokotxa – fish necks, a Basque favorite – by the kilo on the way to meet a cheesemaker thinking way beyond the region’s borders. Down the street, we will stop by the workshop of a Mexican of Basque origin who is reviving a chocolate tradition that once connected this port to his home country. Heading out of the historic center, across a bridge where the Urumea River meets the Cantabrian Sea, we will be welcomed into several restaurants and food shops run by a tight-knit circle of culinary professionals who are filling in the gaps between San Sebastian’s Michelin-starred restaurants and its simpler neighborhood spots. Here, depending on the season, our day may include a homey fish stew and a sip of artisanal cider, or perhaps exceedingly fresh and delicate Cantabrian anchovies accompanied by a new school txakoli, the classic Basque white wine, minerally and smacking of the sea. Committed to quality, but restless for change, it is in these places where we will taste what is of the moment, meet the young leaders of the city’s pioneering kitchens, and truly experience the Basque Way.