Chicken of the Corn

For decades I’d been hearing that San Sebastián has the best food in Spain, or maybe Europe, or maybe the world. So when I headed there in November to do some research for a book I’m co-authoring with chef Ryan Bartlow—though I’m well aware of the subjective limitations of such rhapsodies—I still believed my boyfriend and I were en route to something extraordinary.

Ryan is a Chicago native who makes Basque food in New York; he gave me an absurdly long list of places to try, and I made a bunch of reservations, plus leaving us time to forage in all his recommended pintxo bars. I hadn’t realized that mid-November to mid-December is considered “holiday break” in Basque country, and a whole lot of places were closed, including the restaurants Arzak and Elkano, and the pintxo bars Ganbara, Txepetxa, and Borda Berri.

Still, we found much to love: deeply caramelized piquillo peppers at Narru, meaty Cantabrian anchovies and tiny grilled clams at Kaia-Kaipe, and a full dinner at Bar Néstor: jamón Ibérico, potato tortilla, flash-fried Gernika peppers, and tomato salad, all of it redolent of Spanish olive oil, all of it eaten standing up in a room heavy with ambient smoke and beef fat. On either side of us at the bar, happy guests faced off against gigantic, richly fat-marbled txuletas: brawny, well-aged steaks, showered with coarse salt and seared to a voluptuous rareness.