San Sebastián exists for one purpose: pleasure. The city curls around La Concha, a bay so perfectly shaped it looks engineered, with golden sand and water that shifts between green and blue depending on the clouds. Monte Urgull and Monte Igueldo bookend the scene like parentheses around a sentence that says only beautiful things. I walked the promenade on my first evening, watching the light change on the water, and I understood immediately why the Spanish royal family chose this as their summer retreat in the nineteenth century — and why every chef in Europe has since chosen it as the place where they want to cook.
The Parte Vieja
The Parte Vieja — the old town — packs more extraordinary eating into a few streets than most countries manage in their entirety. The tradition is to move from bar to bar, one pintxo and one txakoli at each, building a meal across the neighbourhood. At Gandarias, the seared foie on toast. At La Cuchara de San Telmo, the slow-cooked cheeks in wine. At Ganbara, the wild mushroom revuelto that appears in autumn and disappears when the season ends. At Bar Nestor, the tortilla — served at one o’clock and eight o’clock, two tortillas per day, no more, no exceptions — which is the finest tortilla española I have ever eaten and possibly the finest anyone has ever eaten.
The system is democratic and self-governing. You stand, you eat, you leave a few euros on the bar, you move on. Nobody takes your order. Nobody brings you a menu. The food sits on the counter, you point, and it appears on your plate, and if you are lucky you have chosen the bar at the moment when the kitchen sends out something new and hot and everyone at the counter reaches for it simultaneously in an act of competitive dining that is, in its way, one of the great spectator sports.
Beyond the Pintxos
The high-end restaurants are why the chefs come. Arzak, run by Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter Elena, has held three Michelin stars since 1989 and pioneered the nueva cocina vasca — the new Basque cuisine that took traditional ingredients and subjected them to techniques borrowed from science and art and the particular kind of imagination that comes from growing up in a region where the raw materials are so good they almost cook themselves. Mugaritz, in the hills outside the city, is a more challenging proposition — a restaurant that sometimes serves courses you do not immediately recognize as food but that collectively produce a meal you will think about for years.
But I keep returning to the pintxo bars. There is something about the democracy of the counter — the banker beside the fisherman beside the tourist, all reaching for the same anchovy toast — that feels like an argument for a particular way of living. Food in San Sebastián is not a transaction. It is a commons. The city treats eating the way some cities treat parks or libraries: as a public good, available to everyone, maintained by collective pride, and elevated by the understanding that pleasure, shared, does not diminish but multiplies.
The Beaches and the Hills
La Concha is the famous beach, and it earns its fame — the crescent of sand, the balustrade promenade, the island of Santa Clara sitting in the middle of the bay like a green punctuation mark. Zurriola, on the other side of Monte Urgull, is the surfer’s beach, rougher and younger, backed by the Kursaal conference centre whose glass cubes glow amber at sunset. Walk up Monte Igueldo for the panorama — the funicular is charmingly ancient — or climb Monte Urgull through the wooded paths to the statue of Christ at the summit, where the view encompasses the entire coast and the green hills behind and the sense of a city that has arranged itself, very deliberately, for the maximum delivery of beauty.
When to go: June through September for beach weather. The San Sebastián International Film Festival in September brings a glamour that suits the city. May is lovely and less crowded. Winter is rainy but the pintxo bars are warmer for it, and the cider houses in the hills are in full season.