What a weekend! After our last calcotada, Lee passed around this episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. High on romesco sauce, a few of us decided to complete a pilgrimage to San Sebastian to visit some of the same restaurants. So we set off on Friday afternoon with reservations at Asador Etxebarri on Saturday afternoon and at Mugaritz on Sunday afternoon. Coincidentally, these restaurants were both ranked in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list that came out last week (39 and 4, respectively)

We were joined on the roadtrip by Gorana (an old HSBC friend from London), Annie fresh off a WWOOFing farm, and Keith (a Georgetown friend in BCN of Basque decent). We got on the road at about 1 pm and promptly got distracted by a Renaissance Fair in the medieval Catalan town of Montblanc, complete with costumed locals, food stalls, and animals. We got the stomach stretching started with some plates of grilled meats and escudella, a stew of sausage, beans, potatoes and pasta. For sake of autheticity, our only utensils were giant wooden spoons.


Back on the road, we finally made it to San Sebastian around 8:30pm where we were met by other friends in from Dublin and London, David and Rob. We stayed at a little pension smack in the center of the Old Town called Adore Plaza. It's run by a young guy named Santi, looked after by his somewhat grumpy parents, and overrun by their three cats. Not quite Somnio, but the location was great and the price was right. We promptly deposited our bags and headed out for the first of many pintxos. Armed with a terrific book about the best pintxos in town and a few other resources, our first stop was Tamboril, where we downed a few glasses of the local sparkling white wine Txakolin and started with some fried shrimp, garlicky mushrooms, and fried red peppers stuffed with melted morcilla (blood sausage). It was an incredible start. We headed next to La Cuchara de San Telmo for some sauteed foie with apple, duck, scallops wrapped in bacon, grilled cod, and a stewed tomato. All delicious, but the place was super crowded and stopped serving food by 11. Fortunately, some local hooligans had gotten in a bar fight, were taken away by the cops and left plates of untouched food for us to graze. We hit up a few more generic places and stopped by a couple bars before resting up for Saturday's adventure in grilled foods. Miraculously, everything was about 10 euros a person at each stop along the way.

Asador Etxebarri is located in the tiny town of Axpe, which is about half way between San Sebastian and Bilbao. It's a little tough to find, as the town hasn't yet made it on Google Maps or GPS. I had a set of directions in our car, but the boys weren't able to benefit from my good planning and had to wing it. I thought Keith was going to have a heartattack by the time they made it to the village. The place is set at the foot of a mountain, and is incredible scenic. I'd love to know more about the history of how it came to be what it is. I'm guessing it just started as a tiny local restaurant until word got out that the chef is a genius. Everything is cooked on a grill, including their homemade bread and smoked butter. According to the Bourdain interview, the chef has custom made grills and grill accessories for every kind of food. We did the tasting menu that included homemade smoked butter, a beautiful giant red prawn, purple potatoes with spring mushrooms, peas with pancetta, baby squids, nice steak, and a caramelized french toast with ice cream. We took a beautiful walk around the village afterwards to work off some of the meal.




Up next... Bilbao and Mugaritz...