SO THERE we were one morning in a San Sebastian tapas - or pintxos as they are known in the Basque region - bar, trying to figure out how to say 'plain omelette' in Spanish, when a question popped into our heads. No, it was not 'Why can't the Spanish cook eggs without stuffing them with potatoes?' but rather, 'Why is it that Michelin starred chefs don't eat at other Michelin starred restaurants?'
It's a bit of a conundrum. After all, foodies of the world make it a pilgrimage of sorts to seek out the highest-rated restaurants from Tokyo to New York. But ask any top chef where they eat, the answer is invariably some nondescript mom-and-pop place where the emphasis is on pristine ingredients and minimal preparation.
So what gives? Why are people like us collecting Michelin stars for the experience and bragging rights, when the very chefs who earned those stars are happy with a simple grilled fish caught in the waters at the doorstep of their favourite eatery? Is it because of an unspoken boycott of the 'competition'? Is it because they spend all day preparing slow-cooked lamb and extracting liquid from olive oil, that they need to be reminded what real food looks like? Or could it be that, despite all the pomp, grace and avant gardism that goes into Michelin-starred cooking, there is something to be said about honest, traditional cooking that withstands trends and warms the heart?
Nowhere is this more obvious than in San Sebastian - long envied for having the highest concentration of Michelin stars per square kilometre than anywhere in the world, but with even more homey restaurants that will impress you with their dedication to quality. Arzak, Akelare, Martin Berasetagui and Mugaritz will look good on your dining resume, but the city's seaside location ensures a plentiful supply of live seafood that makes even the humblest restaurant a star in its own right.
If you want to go star-searching while keeping your culinary feet firmly on terra firma at the same time, here's a quick guide to the heart and style of San Sebastian dining.
Casa Camara
San Juan,
79 Pasajes de San Juan
Tel: +34 943 523699
IF your grandmother was Spanish and she had a house by the waterfront, this is what it would look like. Old and a tad grungy, it faces the San Sebastian harbourfront and is about 10 minutes by taxi from the city centre. Depending on where the cab drops you, you either have to walk along the harbour and through a long alley flanked by quaint old buildings, or you take a boat from the other side of the harbour and get off right in front of the restaurant. Either way, if you're there for dinner you'll able to catch a pretty sunset.
Casa Camara is run by two little old ladies - really. One of them is so old and fragile that you're afraid her legs will give way as she leads you to your table. Yet she is so sweet and friendly despite not speaking a word of English that you can't wish for a better greeting. The other old lady is far more sprightly as she easily navigates tables, takes orders and delivers the dishes - namely, ultra fresh seafood taken straight from the boats that dock at the harbour. There is even a lobster 'pond' in the middle of the dining room where a pulley system lets the staff draw a basket of live lobsters from the waters below. At around 26 euros ($55) for a small lobster, it's not a bad deal - it comes perfectly grilled with moist and succulent meat.
Enjoy the view of the harbour from windows that span the length of the dining room and order the specials of the day: flat round oysters full of the salty sea flavour, home made fish soup which is a murky brown but flavourful broth with clams and shrimp, and excellent fresh hake in a lightly thickened broth with fresh peas, clams and prawns. The thick white fish is steam-cooked in the broth and is super tender and fresh.
For dessert, squares of custard are coated in egg and flour and pan-fried before being dusted with cinnamon. It's not great, but by then, you're already wowed by the warmth of the servers and their genuine friendliness. When simple food is served with such sincerity, it really hits the spot.
THE saying, 'there are plenty of fish in the sea' must really ring true in San Sebastian. This is what we concluded when we had our first introduction to the local delicacy called kokotxas. Pronounced as 'coco-chas', they are triangular pieces of gelatinous flesh cut from the 'neck' of the hake. One hake yields one kokotxas. One person is served three to four kokotxas at a time. If you have them prepared in two ways - grilled and panfried in egg - you're eating the necks of six to eight fish. Multiply that by a table of four or five and you're talking a lot of hake. But how does it taste? Firm, fleshy, gelatinous - and when pan-fried with egg it tastes almost like the local oyster omelette.
Elkano is a near-institution in San Sebastian - it's located in a little fishing village called Getaria about 40 minutes' drive from town, in a quaint building just off the water. The owners are so particular about the quality of their seafood that they choose only the fish from specific areas so they know what they eat. The restaurant specialises in grilled seafood as evident from the serious-looking charcoal barbecue just outside the dining room - owner Pedro Arregui pioneered the skill of roasting whole fish on the grill and while he's since handed over much of the operations to his son Aitor, he can be seen pottering around the restaurant and lending a hand where needed.
Roasted flat fish and lobster are Elkano's specialty - the flat turbot lends itself particularly well to the grilling process. With eyes on just one side of its body, the meat from each side tastes different - largely because the fish swims on its side so only half of its body is exposed to the sun. Firm sweet texture with lots of gelatin on one side will make you eschew imported turbot for good.
Large live lobsters are brought to your table for inspection before returning in two split grilled halves served simply with butter and a bit of lemon. Don't miss the fish soup - with the colour of mud it looks terrible but tastes superb. And make sure you say so because it's Aitor's grandmother's recipe.
Elkano is a large restaurant and quite commercialised, but its freshness can't be beaten.
Kaia-Kaipe
General Arnao 4, 2808 Getaria
Tel: +34 943 140500
THE service at Elkano may seem a little too slick compared with the family-style warmth we experienced at Kaia-Kaipe - just a stone's throw away from the former. This two storey eatery serves casual food downstairs for lunch but the dining room proper is on the second level, and charcoal-grilling is the main draw here.
One thing to note about seafood restaurants in San Sebastian is that the cooking styles don't vary much - so pick different kinds of seafood for a change of pace.
The fish soup - yes that murky bowl of happiness - is also very good here since a shortage of fish bones seems highly unlikely in this town. Very fresh shrimp are quickly boiled in salted water. Clams are steamed in wine, while a whole crab comes to the table completely shelled and served in the shell - again, fresh clean flavours.
Service is so good that when our order of grilled halibut arrived undercooked, the embarrassed waitress - a motherly figure - took them all away and returned before long with a brand new fish instead of just putting our fish back into the grill. It was perfectly grilled this time - moist and meaty and served with luscious Spanish potatoes.
On top of that, we got a platter of complimentary madeleines and a bottle of dessert wine as 'compensation'. Not that they needed to, but it was a generous gesture in line with their generous personalities.
Ibai
15 Getaria Kalea, San Sebastian
Tel: +34 943 428 764
WHEN the chefs at Mugaritz heard that we had dined at Ibai just the day before, they told us that their kitchen staff had a little piggy bank where they would put their spare change and when they had saved enough money, they would all dine at Ibai.
This chefs' favourite is located in downtown San Sebastian - an absolutely charming old-fashioned dining room with wooden beams and stucco walls. It's run by a husband-and-wife team and you definitely need to speak Spanish or take someone who can because there is no menu nor wine list - the wife will tell you what specials they have and you decide what you want.
This was the day when we were introduced to some of the ugliest snails one has ever seen - called percebos or barnacles carefully chiselled off rocks and simply boiled in salt water. We later saw them at a market being sold for 120 euros a kilo - so don't sniff at these ugly delicacies. To eat them, you just pull off one end and bite off the crunchy chewy meat. They also served kokotxas done in a confit style, but by then, the kokotxa attraction had long worn off and we weren't too enthused about them.
The husband wields a light cooking hand - serving up tasty morsels of cold lobster slices in a refreshing cold dressing, lightly fried baby shrimp, and white asparagus with broad beans and tiny sweet peas that were in season for only that month. His halibut with potatoes was also excellent - a very predictable preparation you can't get tired of.
Because of its casual intimacy and amiable nature of the owners, Ibai offers a first hand look at really rustic cooking - and is pretty endearing at the same time.
WHEN in San Sebastian, go star-gazing and there's no better place to do so than Arzak, the three Michelin-starred eatery that is now helmed by Juan Maria Arzak's daughter Elena. Its distinguished interior is slick but not intimidating, with its waitresses dressed more like nurses than serving staff. Still, they display a decent bedside manner - albeit just that little bit diffident.
Elena Arzak's cooking is deft and sure - you're plied with an array of amuse bouche that aim to amuse both the eye and the palate, like a crunchy mango and cheese snack and a lighted tray holding little 'sandwiches' of lotus root crisps and fish mousse. Mussels were given a crunchy coating with corn while a dab of foie gras on apple with a sugar crust was delicious.
One highlight of the meal was her lobster claw meat served on a bed of what looked like Dumex milk powder but turned out to be dehydrated olive oil. A too-salty sauce was poured over but it was generally tasty. What really made our meal was a runny cooked egg with sweet peas and bits of fried lard covered with a wafer thin sheet of edible yellow paper. The paper crackled into smithereens as it was scooped up with the oozing egg yolk for a luxurious mouth feel - excellent. Also impressive was a plate of beautifully presented oysters covered with red pepper blankets.
Still, it took a bit of mental gymnastics to get over the concept of eating clay, which was turned into a chalky white sauce for a piece of sole. Clay is tasteless, which makes you wonder why bother using something with no taste when it adds nothing to the dish except some tricky aesthetics. The sole itself was tasty enough, even if the coating didn't entice. A bronzed monkfish, on the other hand, looked ravishing in its reddish gold coat - but tasted like normal monkfish in the end.
With hits and misses, the meal at Arzak was still an experience - but was it mindblowing? Perhaps not, but it's worth a visit nonetheless.
IT'S a breathtaking place - a traditional farmhouse about 40 minutes away from San Sebastian ensconced in what someone described as 'Edelweiss country' but the food at Mugaritz is anything but farm-like.
Expect delicious blackened potatoes cooked in hot clay and deep fried baby shrimp as pre-dinner nibbles, before going on to a weird little dinner theatre where everything on your table and plate plays a little role.
It starts from the hanging fork and spoon table centrepiece and two place cards on the table - one depicting 150 minutes of bliss or 150 minutes of wasted time. Presumably it's the equivalent of those survey forms where you rate your meal.
It's hard to decide whether you're enjoying yourself when the meal seems to be more of an exercise in cleverness for chef Andoni Luis Aduriz than a palate-pleasing one for the diner.
A lettuce heart soaked in vanilla brine tasted as bland as it looked, while little balls of delicate goat cheese gnocchi was definitely an acquired taste. And why fly in sea urchin from Japan to dress up the duck foie gras, given its rank smell and dubious combination with the liver.
Still, Aduriz's idea of depicting a bonfire on a plate was quirky if silly. A piece of blackened beef sitting among charred 'embers' looked positively inedible, but when we ventured to nibble on the embers, they were rather tasty. But generally, our food was at war - different strong flavours on the same plate fighting for dominance and alienating the person trying to eat them.
Desserts were more successful, particularly a frozen white chocolate sphere served with bits of nut brittle.
If you're in the mood to play with your food, Mugaritz is probably the right playground for you. But if you want the best of both worlds - ie, innovation and good taste - you might have to look elsewhere.
