San Sebastián makes a strong case for being the best place in the world to eat. The Parte Vieja — the old quarter — is a grid of narrow streets lined almost entirely with pintxo bars, each with a zinc counter covered in small plates: anchovy on bread, jamón croqueta, a skewer of txipiron, a slice of tortilla. You eat standing, you drink Txakoli, you move on. It is the most pleasurable way to spend an evening in any European city.
Above the bar culture sits a restaurant scene of unusual seriousness: Arzak, Mugaritz, Akelarre, Amelia. These are restaurants that have been at the frontier of Spanish cooking for decades and continue to be relevant. The contrast — between a €4 pintxo eaten standing and a €300 tasting menu eaten over four hours — is part of what makes the city fascinating. Both are expressions of the same obsessive local attitude to food.