The beating heart of the Basque Country, San Sebastian is a city to be savoured. As a coastal city flanked by farmlands, its cuisine fuses fishermen’s hauls and seasonal harvests. Sea and field collide in the kitchen, creating hearty, healthy dishes. If you learn only one Basque word in San Sebastian, it will be pintxos. Pintxos are the Basque Country’s answer to tapas, offering a gamut of small plates to be swapped, shared, and snacked on. The name ‘pintxos’ comes from the Spanish word ‘pincho’, meaning toothpick. Toothpicks are used to skewer ingredients together, creating towers of bread, peppers, cheese and meat. Pintxos are said to have their origins in the 1930s, evolving from the older Spanish tradition of tapas. Over the years they became a mainstay, emblematic of Basque cuisine’s artistry and variety.
At first glance, the difference between pintxos and tapas isn’t obvious. Meat-eaters find the familiar chorizo, chicken and seafood. Vegetarians face the simple Iberian staples: potatoes, mushrooms and eggs. However, pintxos differ from tapas not in flavour but in spirit. Pintxos offer a new way of enjoying food, one I hadn’t encountered in all my travels in and beyond Spain.
When it comes to tapas, there’s nothing better than sitting down in a crowded restaurant for a mosaic of sharer plates. Pintxos, though, will have you on your feet. They are best enjoyed on the culinary equivalent of a bar crawl. Practically every pub, restaurant and café in San Sebastian offers pintxos. Cheap, ready-made and small, pintxos can be ready in minutes and eaten in seconds. With their modest size and rapid preparation time, they encourage tourists to traipse from bar to bar on a pintxos-peppered walking tour.
If you’re anything like me, your mouth will be watering already. The prospect of pairing staple dishes with sea air and Mediterranean sun was a tempting one. Fresher’s Week antics with a culinary spin? Sign me up! The idea of a food crawl enticed as much as the food itself. However, there was a hitch. As a vegetarian, Spain’s menus are riddled with asterisks and small-print. What use is a culinary paradise if you can only try three of its dishes? As I researched San Sebastian’s cuisine (I am the type to read a menu online in advance), my heart sank. Squid. Hake. Pork. Beef. It looked like I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
As we arrived in San Sebastian’s gothic Old Town, my worries dissipated. Tough I missed some of the city’s most iconic dishes, San Sebastian still offered a deep-dive into Basque cuisine, agriculture, and history. When done right, a veggie tour of San Sebastian can be downright delicious. Read on for eight tips any vegetarian wayfarer needs to make the most of pintxos; if you don’t, your whistle-stop tour of Basque cuisine may be little more than a torrent of tortillas.
1. Don’t worry about meal times.
Eating is a little different in San Sebastian. Though it’s worth sitting down for an evening meal, you don’t need to set aside time for breakfast and lunch. If you really want to do it properly, you’ll need to take a more fluid approach to eating.
My group tended to head straight into the Old Town, ten minutes from San Sebastian’s train station. This is the foodie’s pilgrimage site, where pintxos fans converge in its packed streets. The main avenues are lined with bars and restaurants: you’d be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t serve pintxos. Bars touted their Basque delicacies on large chalkboards, beckoning to us as we drifted. We sank into a blur of bite-sized portions, cider, and traditional Basque wine.
We moved from bar to bar, trying one or two items per menu. We shared cider between us, sold in what looked like wine bottles. Bill paid and plates polished, we headed to the next stop. We’d taken in the atmosphere in bite-size portions, and were ready for the next offering. Squat basements, airy terraces, marble-walled restaurants…establishments came and went as quickly as the tiny platters.
Hopping from bar to bar burned off the odd calorie and helped us stay sober. More importantly, it gave us the lay of the land. We began to discern which stops have the widest offerings, which attract the larger crowds and—as is always crucial—which attract the locals. As a vegetarian, I soon learned which bars I could trust.
Walking around for an hour or two, stopping at four or five bars, is a great way to familiarise yourself with the Old Town. By the end of the first run you’ll have a full stomach, a favourite dish, and a few ticks on your San Sebastian bingo card. I spent between 40 and 50 euros a day, and I ate more than my fill.
By moving around the Old Town, you can also soak up the culture. Cathedrals, museums, and souvenir shops crowd the area. The area’s moody architecture makes for a nice palate-cleanser between feasts. The sulking grey stone contrasts with the sunshine, while salty breezes blend with kitchen steam. As you pass restaurants you can watch the chefs at work. Outside the bars, tourists and smokers settle for standing tables. Washing lines hang above the street, and as you approach the waterfront the building facades grow steadily lighter. The Old Town becomes more like an Italian coastal village. Affordable cafes vanish, too, so you circle back to the centre.
Between two bar stops, we walked through the San Telmo Museum, which charts the Basque Country’s history from the Neolithic to the Pre-Franco era. We toured the Koruko Andre Mariaren basilika after our third bar, feasting our eyes on religious art as we sobered up. As penance for entering drunk, we slid coins into the nearest donation box. The city’s culinary and cultural attractions occupy the same space, making it easy for you to switch from gluttony to galleries.
To really appreciate pintxos, it’s best to adopt a new way of eating. Forget about fixed meal-times and go on a taster tour of the Old Town. If you’re a vegetarian, there’s no better way to scope out the most suitable restaurants and dishes.
2. Order some guindillas.
No vegetarian’s deep-dive into pintxos is complete without guindillas. Guindillas, or piquillos, are thin green chilli peppers that resemble broad beans. The closest equivalent in a tapas bar would be padrón peppers, although this may be one of many comparisons that Basque locals resent. Guindillas are often served coated in salt and sugar, offsetting their hot tang. Portions tend to be generous, yet not too spicy to provoke any serious regret. They’re less greasy than the ham and fish any meat-eating friends may be enjoying. They pair particularly well with San Sebastian’s ciders, especially when you come across a hotter variety.
Guindillas are harvested seasonally in the rural areas surrounding San Sebastian. In San Sebastian, the coast’s offerings are off limits to a vegetarian. Unless you’re a pescetarian, you’ll inevitably miss out on its hake and cod. In a city which prides itself on such dishes, this can feel like a serious loss. However, vegetarians can taste the fruit of the fields. They can take in the flavours and colours of the surrounding mountains. Guindillas are an icon of Basque cuisine, and they can prevent any vegetarian from sensing they’ve missed out.
Guindillas varied in subtle ways from place to place, which kept me circling back to them. They are also a great dish to order on the side. They can be nibbled at alongside bread, olives, or other savoury dishes. They’re a natural companion to pintxos, to be set in the middle of a crowded table and picked at between mouthfuls.
It’s worth noting that guindillas aren’t always listed as pintxos, which are always a restaurant’s cheapest and smallest dishes. They are often listed as raciones, which tend to be larger, more expensive dishes. Guindillas can cost a euro or two more, but they’re worth it at least once.
I particularly enjoyed the guindillas in Atari, a restaurant sat opposite an imposing 18th-Century basilica, the aforementioned Koruko Andre Mariaren basilika. Despite its prime location, the restaurant was a pocket of calm. Atari bills itself as a blend of modern and traditional cuisine, even describing itself as ‘avant-garde’. The latter phrase conjures nightmare visions of Heston Blumenthal assaulting rotisserie chickens with liquid nitrogen and crème brûlée torches. Luckily, the interior is muted and simple. Large windows give a view of the adjacent basilica, providing plenty of natural light. Dishes are listed on the usual chalkboards. Table and bar service are fast and friendly. There were plenty of evening reservations, but the afternoon proved a sweet spot. While the outdoor terrace was crowded, it was quiet inside.
I told the waitress I was a vegetarian. Her reaction was one I’d seen across Spain: a gasp of pity and confusion. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d made the sign of the Cross. She recommended the guindillas, and I obliged. It was a good choice, and a generous portion. We split the guindillas while we watched tourists mill past the basilica. It was a perfect vantage point to step back and watch the crowds we had just been part of. By some miracle, Atari was quieter than the basilica itself. At eight euros per dish, the guindillas brought my bill to 20, including a tip.
As emblems of the region’s rural communities, guindillas merit a trip out of San Sebastian. Ordizia, 40 minutes away by train, has a weekly market where you can pick up local produce for fair prices. At the market, I left my friends at the butcher’s stand. I headed to a table spilling over with guindillas. It was worth the detour. The brown bag I left with cost little more than the train ticket. On top of that, of course, Ordizia has a bar or two, with cheap cider by the bottle.
3. Trust the tortilla.
Face it: it’s unavoidable. In Spain, the tortilla is as irrefutable as death and taxes, if not more so. Like any good staple food, it’s easy to make, a little fatty, and has a million local and familial spins on it. Bacon, mushrooms, cheese, spinach…the Spanish tortilla is a blank canvas on which the local cuisine’s signature, and a splash of personal colour, can be etched.
This grandiose introduction perhaps oversells the tortillas of San Sebastian. Though they were as excellent, warming, and cheap as they are across Spain, I did not detect any Basque spin on the snack. The tortillas I found in San Sebastian brought few surprises, even if slices were more generous than I found in Barcelona. It was like meeting an old friend, only to learn he hasn’t changed in the ten years you haven’t seen him. Still, to have a reliable meat-free dish available across Spain is something to be thankful for. I treated the tortillas as my Hail Mary, something to fall back on if a menu had no other green (v) signs on it. It was my pintxos in a pinch, my safety net. In the end, you’ll eat a tortilla in San Sebastian whether you want to or not. The tortilla will seek you out, no matter which bar you visit, no matter how you resist. It will be there, reasonable and hefty, and you’ll surrender to it. It’ll be worth it.
If you can persuade a local friend, host, or relative to whip up a tortilla, you’re golden. They taste all the more nourishing when they’re made to a family recipe. You feel initiated into some grand secret. If not, opt for a mushroom or cheese tortilla to add some extra flavour. You’ll be eating a lot of tortillas in San Sebastian, so it’s worth welcoming variety wherever you find it. Tortillas are also a great breakfast food, one that I found better suited the morning chill than the other pintxos on offer.
If you can’t find tortillas on the menu, look for revueltos. Revueltos are more like scrambled eggs, but they’re often served with the same additions you’d find in an omelette.
4. Try the croquetas
Croquetas, unsurprisingly, are like croquettes. These battered cylinders contain a savoury filling of meat, seafood, or vegetables. They have the guilty comfort of deep-fried food, but also taste authentic enough to justify three or four helpings. As we moved from bar to bar, I soon found croquetas to be my favourite. They brought the key elements of pintxos together: they were rich and indulgent, yet light enough to merit seconds. It was like their meagre size allowed a tighter concentration of flavour. The vegetarian croquetas often contained just one ingredient, usually mushrooms, furthering the notion that they were a kind of flavour singularity, deliciously compact and gone in an instant. Again, they felt familiar but fresh, and bore the traces of the region’s heritage.
The greatest endorsement of croquetas I can offer is that my meat-eating friends soon mimicked my orders. Though ham or seafood croquetas were available, the creamy mushroom croquetas reigned supreme as we staggered from bar to bar. The croquetas offered me that rare sense that the vegetarian options were not a bastardisation or simplification of the cuisine on offer; they were pintxos at their best, so good that they made the carnivores jealous.
5. Treat yourself to some churros.
To make it as a vegetarian in San Sebastian, you’ll have to stretch the definition of pintxos a little. Take the bars where my friends ate the iconic kokotxas, a dish made from a hake’s neck, one of the quintessential Basque dishes…I got chips. There were bars where they ate elaborate, teetering skewers of cheese and meat while I picked at peanuts. When you go to San Sebastian, bring your well-weathered diplomacy, your spirit of compromise. Churros, though, make compromise sweet. They are more an icon of Spain than the Basque country, but they have made steady incursions into San Sebastian. Whether this is to cater to tourists or because locals have been swayed is beside the point. The point is that they are good, and they pair nicely with the sour cider and evening air.
Churros are best enjoyed at the end of the night, when alcohol has simplified your desires and amplified the call of the city’s deep-fryers. Rather than heading to a traditional cider-house or trendy restaurant, find the cheapest, trashiest churros you can. These are street food, and no Michelin poseur, chocolate connoisseur, or air-fryer acolyte persuade me otherwise. Churros are best served in an unglamorous, bustling food hall.
The Churreria Santa Lucía offered us just that. Like many restaurants in the Old Town, it has no front door to speak of. The front wall is missing, creating a wide entrance into the churreria. Elderly couples, Basque teenagers, and tourist families all converged under its artificial lights. The sizzle of fryers and the smell of pure indulgence sent ripples of delight up our spines. Here was the glory of everything that’s bad for you, the sweetest self-sabotage. With a display and counter comparable to a chip shop, our hunger pangs even carried a tinge of nostalgia.
Our churros were cheap, oily, and delicious. They were the perfect end to a day of new flavours and flowing drink. If the average pintxos crawl is an odyssey, the churros are the homecoming. Order six, not twelve, and don’t wear a white shirt: the droopy chocolate sauce does not wash out.
6. Take a trip to the cider house.
Though I have sworn by the nomadic nature of pintxos, sometimes it pays to stay put. If you want to sit down and enjoy larger meal, the region’s sidrerías(sagardotegi in the Basque language)should be your first port of call. Sidrerías are cider houses that brew their own cider and serve set menus. These set menus can take some skill to navigate as a vegetarian, but the atmosphere and alcohol will make it worth your while. If you like to take a break from your city break, a sidrería is second only to the mountain ranges. The cider is also criminally cheap and deadly good.
We visited a sidrería on the outskirts of San Sebastian, while we waited for a connecting train to Barcelona. We walked twenty minutes to reach the sidrería, in sweltering heat. With no taxis in the area, we lugged our bags from the station to a quiet remote town. Heat shimmers hung over the faded yellow fields, and our thirst expressed itself in twinges of irritation. We rationed lukewarm water in plastic bottles, bickering over who drank the most. Passing cars turned to blinding lights as their metallic shells reflected the sun. By the time we reached the sidrería it had become an oasis, a safe haven. We went inside and posted up at a table.
The sidrería had long tables, with room for large groups. One hosted a local family, spanning three generations from elders to young children. The men watched us with suspicion or amusement. They were not hostile, but it was obvious that tourists were a rare sight this far out. Our waiter, however, made his hostility very clear. In ordering dessert but not drinks, we had committed a cardinal sin. The sidrería clearly expects its guests to order a full meal, perhaps so they can break even after selling cider so cheap. We didn’t have time, though, and ordered four wedges of cheesecake to go with our cider. If you do make the trip to a sidrería, go with a healthy appetite!
The cider, of course, was unmatched. Large wooden barrels were indented in the wall, with tiny taps on their front. These taps spurted cider at terminal velocity, crashing in our glasses like sea foam on the capital’s rocks. It was the best we tried, and the cheapest too. If the atmosphere was akin to a shady saloon in a Western, the player-piano falling silent as we said no gracias to the three-course offering, then the cider was the kind of drink I’d gladly get gunned down for.
I can’t testify to the quality of vegetarian food in sidrerías. I can only repeat the claims of our taxi drivers and hosts: this is Europe’s best cider, and the Basque country’s best culinary offering. Sidrerías are billed as the quintessential Basque dining experience, with a range of ciders to pair with the dishes. From what we sampled, these proud claims were fair ones. The cider was excellent and the cheesecake sublime. If you have a sweet tooth, or the post-churros queasiness is proving too much, this creamy dessert is your best bet. If you’re feeling reckless, you could even have both.
7. Drink wisely.
San Sebastian’s temptations come in bottles as well as on platters. Drinks menus are dominated by cider, and a sparkling white wine called txakoli. Both of these pair dangerously well with pintxos. Txakoli is light and refreshing, while the crisp ciders are subtler than the ciders you’ll find elsewhere. For aspiring connoisseurs, there are plenty of subtle notes to taste, smell, and see. In short, the drink is good, and it goes perfectly with the food. There’s also spectacle: waiters pour txakoli from a height, while cider-house taps spit like cobras. If all that wasn’t bad enough, it’s all dirt cheap, especially by the bottle.
For those of us who drink, trying these Basque mainstays is a key part of the San Sebastian experience. However, I would advise vegetarians to pace themselves carefully. With a smaller variety of dishes available, I sat at many a bar with just a drink to hand; my friends, meanwhile, had another dish with their ciders. This encouraged them to take it slow, and provided that crucial protection that food provides. I, meanwhile, grew steadily more hammered. You cannot convince me that vegetable dishes offer the same ballast against intoxication as meat does. Pair that with the August sun and you have the hangover from hell, one that you will struggle to alleviate with small plates. By the second day, I was lagging at the back as we walked from bar to bar, dipping into emergency funds so I could buy sunglasses and paracetamol. Pace yourself, and take no shame in the odd Fanta. Order your drinks with your food, and make sure you’re eating enough: with such small plates, it’s easy to lose track.
We chose Constitución Plaza for our evening drinks. Restaurants line the four walls of the plaza, with plenty of outdoor seating. After a long day of hopping from bar to bar, the plaza offered a nice change of pace. Though it is still within the Old Town, its wide-open space contrasted sharply with the narrow alleys surrounding it. The drinks are pricier here, which kept me on my best behaviour—mostly. The waiters poured txakoli from a height, lifting the bottle to their eye level with the cup at their waist. Naturally, we imitated, wasting half the bottle in spillage.
In terms of non-alcoholic options, most bars have mocktails on offer at reasonable prices. Keep your eyes peeled for a virgin sangria, which is tropical and refreshing enough to slake the day’s thirst.
8. Be wary of the Michelin star.
As San Sebastian has asserted itself as the Basque country’s foodie capital, Michelin-star restaurants have cropped up. I won’t claim that these restaurants don’t deserve their accolades. I’m sure the food on offer is delectable. I’m sure that some of the restaurateurs are locals who have earned their place in the culinary constellations. I’m sure that they’ve received glowing reviews and generous tips. However, speaking strictly as a vegetarian, I saw little reason to attend these restaurants. The three menus we perused offered pitiful vegetarian options. None of them matched the variety we found in cheaper restaurants. Though the seafood and meat options tempted my friends, the prices made our eyes water more than our mouths. It seems absurd to pay high prices for second-rate vegetarian options when there’s an array of cheap dishes to be sampled.
More fundamentally, I am unsure how the Michelin-star ethos can be reconciled with the spirit of pintxos. For my group and me, pintxos meant not just the flavours but the experience of bar hopping. Pinxtos meant going from place to place, meeting locals and fellow visitors, finding new spots, exploring, sampling. Pintxos turned the city into an adventure and a taster menu, and it is this that made San Sebastian so memorable. How can this experience be replicated in a static restaurant setting? For us, the core of pintxos culture was fluidity and motion. The Michelin restaurants had rigid set menus, which we could have found anywhere else in the world. If you’re coming to San Sebastian for pintxos, go all-in; your wallet will thank you.
If you do fancy a sit-down meal, go for a sidrería or one of the restaurants that don’t sell local food. There are plenty of Italian restaurants, creperies and burger joints that offer a change of pace.
With its rich agriculture and wealth of restaurants, San Sebastian had one of the best vegetarian offerings I have come across in Europe. If you’re looking to try its iconic pintxos, seek out the croquetas, guindillas, and tortillas for a spin on familiar flavours. Venture a little further to its sidrerías and markets, and don’t be afraid to fall back on dishes that won’t satisfy a pintxos purist. More fundamentally, be willing to move about, sample new things, and taste everything that a region has to offer. This is the essence of the experience in San Sebastian: you don’t need to sample the chorizo to find it. You just need a few euros, a healthy appetite, and a taste for cider—oh, and walking boots wouldn’t hurt, either.
