BEST OF BASQUE

San Sebastian’s most-decorated chefs dig into the region’s culinary culture and their black book of dining spots.

-  VICTORIA BURROWS

San Sebastian, on the northern coast of Spain's mountainous Basque Country, has long been known as a dining hotspot. The charming resort town with its Belle Epoque architecture and population of around 200,000 has one of the highest densities of Michelin stars in the world - three of Spain's 13 three-Michelinstar restaurants are here, matched only by the much bigger Barcelona.

Alongside the exceptional fine dining establishments are the town's famed pintxos bars, which serve up the region's snacks paired with txakoli, a lightly effervescent dry white wine. Pintxos traditionally make use of local, seasonal ingredients, such as angulas (baby eels), octopus and the mild, red piquillo peppers of nearby Lodosa, stuffed with tuna. Ingredients are usually stacked up in different arrangements on a piece of bread and held in place with a toothpick. Today, the more creative pintxos bars vie to create ever more novel delicacies using exotic ingredients and contemporary techniques.

Locals and visitors alike have thronged the bars and restaurants of San Sebastian for decades, whether to sit at the white tablecloths of its hushed temples of gastronomy or lean against counters crowded with beer glasses and elbows. But how Donostia (as it is known in the Basque language) developed into such a culinary paradise remains a mystery.

"Nobody really knows how or why, but San Sebastian has always been a gastronomic destination," says Elena Arzak, who has effectively taken over the reins at Arzak, one of those temples of gastronomy that her father, Juan Mari Arzak, elevated to threeMichelin-star status in 1989.

"Before the 1970s, people would come from all over Spain to try Basque food plates such as squid in ink sauce, marmitako (tuna-potato soup) and hake with clams seasonal dishes that have always existed, and still do."