Pintxos, San Sebastian

Casa Bartolo

July has been a bit overwhelming - turning the wrong side of 25, getting a new job (finally writing about food!) and spending a week's holiday in the Basque Country - inevitably something had to give and that was my blogging efforts.. but I'm back on the case this month.

Generally speaking, my holidays/trips away revolve around food (when I chose my placement year in France I went to Lyon for 'la gastronomie', lived above a boulangerie and..gained a stone), so for my summer holiday this year I was desperate to visit San Sebastian- apparently the place has more Michelin stars than any other city.

Mediocre bar, uninspiring tapas

Unfortunately me and my buddy Nicki didn't get to those starry establishments but certainly got the pintxos grazing/bar hopping down to a tee by the end of the week - not that either have ever really been a problem for me!

There's plenty on offer in the old town without breaking the bank. I have to say, we picked badly on occasions and ate and boozed at some pretty mediocre bars during the holiday but there were some gems along the way. For something cheap and cheerful Casa Bartolo is a good bet- there was always a good atmosphere in there, the discarded tissues that line the floor are a testament to that, the pintxos didn't centre solely around bread as others did and they serve up a mean sangria.

It's a blur - but Bar Zeruko?- wherever it was, it was on the other end of the spectrum (Calle Pescaderia- just down from bar Txepetxa which the guidebooks raved on about but was pretty uninspiring and the barman a little complacent). Its pintxos were more contemporary, original and the clientele older, with plumper wallets and waistlines - it was a classy place but price-wise wasn't markedly different to Bartolo's so is well worth a visit.

This was one of my pintxos highlights there- so simple- griddled, caramelised banana, jabugo ham and fig speared with a few leaves. Much of the rest of what we ate was unidentifiable but all beautifully constructed both aesthetically and more importantly in the taste department. I'll definitely be returning- either with someone who can speak more Spanish than I can- Hadders?!- or once I've brushed up on vocab as though half the fun of the trip was eating pintxos blindly, I'm sure there was a lot more on the menu here and at the other bars that we would have liked to have tucked into.

Leek cones

This, I think, was a quails egg on black pudding and a splash of Tabasco.

We left San Sebastian a little burnt, a lot more tired and heavier and somewhat blue to be returning to Bilbao for our flight home but stumbled across a lovely food festival/competition along the riverside which perked us right up. The locals above were rustling up stacks of my favourite padron peppers which filled the air with a lovely smoky smell and people were milling between the stalls, dipping in and out to check out the different pintxos on offer- it seemed to be a bit of a free-for-all - why don't they do more of this in England?!

I couldn't resist snapping the couple below in their turquoise boiler suits washing down squid under the fountain - I think they look like Wonka's little Oompa Loompas!

"Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-da, if you're not greedy you will go far.." - pffff?!