Some like it haute
...and even Joanna Tweedy’s children lap up San Sebastian’s Michelin-starred cuisine
There’s one very special constellation that lights up the San Sebastian night sky. This beautiful Basque city, just 15 miles from the French border in northern Spain, boasts 16 glinting Michelin stars and can count some of the world’s best culinary alchemists among its residents.
To visit Donostia – as locals call the city – is to sign up for a gastronomic adventure that pinballs between centuries-old cooking traditions and the wizardry of chefs who tease ingredients into works of art on a nightly basis.
Techniques such as spherification, deconstruction and sous-vide (a posh version of boil in the bag) are liberally sprinkled across menus in even some of the more humble establishments.
With such glittering credentials, San Sebastian, this year’s European Capital of Culture (alongside Poland’s Wroclaw), could be pretentious. Yet, you quickly realise that this easy-onthe-eye seaside city, which has so much more than just food to boast about, invites everyone to dine at its table. Avant garde, maybe… but elitist it certainly isn’t.
Which is good news for us. The views of fawning food critics mean nothing to my children, Belle, four, and Cleo, nearly two, who’d take bangers and mash over haute dining any day.
So when Belle on the third day of our trip said: ‘I’m just dipping my bread in the oil and balsamic, Mum,’ I nearly fell off my chair Almost simultaneously, Cleo discovered calamari, which seemed to double up as natural teething rings. Chewing, and then chewing some more, she quickly devoured half a dozen perfectly-fried coils of squid.
Visually, San Sebastian is soul-soothing; its wide, deep bay is laid out like a curled bicep and offers a horizon of headlands and islands that enchant when the last rays of the sun are bouncing off them.
From the golden sands of the main beach, La Concha, the view of Santa Clara, a small nugget of land adrift in the centre of the bay, and the two mini-mountains – Igueldo to the west and Urgull to the east – is oh-so-pretty and not unlike a cut-sized Rio.
La Concha’s roomy crescent of sand is also a social hub for Donostiarras and it became our go-to spot for fun, too. We paddled in the clear waters, enjoyed the kids’ playground at the Ondarreta end and spent way too much on the pretty La Caramel carousel that whirls in the beachside De Cervantes Plaza.
Victor Hugo wrote about the ‘entertainment’ offered by the raging sea at the Paseo Nuevo promenade when he spent a year here in 1843.
Throughout our stay, we enjoyed San Seb’s most popular foodie trick, pintxos. These are the Basque region’s rather refined take on tapas and they cost only a couple of euros. But most serious foodies come here for more than just fantastical snacking; they want to experience the handiwork of the Basque region’s grand master. Juan Mari Arzak, owner of the eponymous San Sebastian restaurant – with its 100,000-bottle wine cellar and three Michelin Stars – has culinary wordsmiths drooling into their copy.
In our limited experience, the barometer for a great holiday with children is realising you’ve been somewhere and not had to seek out the local aquarium for entertainment. San Sebastian has one, close to the shore, and it’s great… apparently. But we were far too busy paddling in the ocean, eating pinxtos and whirling on carousels to meet the marine life.