Food plays a crucial role in travel because it offers a sensory connection to a place’s culture, history, and traditions. When people travel, they seek authentic experiences, and local cuisine provides a direct way to engage with a destination’s lifestyle and identity. Sharing meals leads to meaningful interactions, and trying regional dishes introduces travelers to new flavors, cooking techniques, and ingredients.
This was certainly true for our group of travelers who recently experienced the culture and cuisine of the Basque Country in our culinary immersion tour. From Michelin-starred restaurants to a hands-on cooking class in Basque techniques to the beautifully chaotic pintxos bars in San Sebastián’s Old Town, they experienced it all!
What Makes Basque Cuisine Unusual
Basque cuisine is deeply rooted in unique cultural traditions, local ingredients, and a distinct geographical setting. The Basque Country, straddling northern Spain and southwestern France, has a rich culinary heritage that blends coastal and mountainous influences.
Here are some reasons why the food of this area stands out:
1. Geographic Diversity: The region has both coastal and inland areas, allowing for a wide variety of ingredients, from fresh seafood (like anchovies and hake) to meats (such as beef and lamb) as well as produce. Because of the diversity, it’s rare to find these same dishes elsewhere.
2. Pintxos Culture: Unlike typical tapas, pintxos are small bites often served atop slices of bread, skewered together. They’re known for being creative and flavorful, blending contrasting tastes in inventive ways. This culture of bite-sized eating encourages socializing and experimenting with different flavors.
3. Traditional Techniques: Basque cuisine relies on age-old methods, like slow-cooking and grilling, using wood-fired grills. We experienced this at Michelin-starred Elkano where the chefs cook the fish over open flame outdoors.
4. Ingredient Focus: There’s a strong emphasis on high-quality, locally sourced ingredients. The Basque approach values simplicity, letting the natural flavors of the food shine, whether it’s through seafood, meats, peppers, or cheeses like Idiazabal, which our travelers experienced during a cheese tasting.
5. Innovative Gastronomy: Basque chefs have been at the forefront of modern culinary innovation, notably in San Sebastián, which has one of the highest concentrations of Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. This has made the region a global leader in experimental cuisine, blending traditional flavors with avant-garde techniques.
This combination of tradition, creativity, and a focus on local ingredients makes Basque cuisine distinct and celebrated worldwide.
A Bite to Remember
We asked our travelers what one bite stood out to them the most during their week in this very special culinary destination. That’s a very hard question when you consider how much delicious food was consumed, but they were up for the challenge!
Shelia Rudzinski and her husband Brandt couldn’t be more different when it comes to eating. Brandt will try absolutely anything, while Shelia describes herself as a picky eater. She doesn’t like tomatoes, but all the fresh tomatoes we had on the trip were a highlight for Brandt. His favorite dish of the trip was the Red Tuna at Elkano, a Michelin-star restaurant in the fishing village of Getaria, because both the freshness and the flavor of that tuna stood out to him.
That tuna was also memorable for Cheryl Lukehart. “I polished off all that was remaining on the portion right in front of me as well as the rest of the next one over. Tuna is the only sushi that I’ll order as just the fish and not in a roll. This tuna tasted so fresh and had a great texture. The subtle seasoning let the fish shine through. It was just a perfect bite of tuna!” said Cheryl.
Shelia also tried tuna belly at Narru for the first time. “It was delicious! I had no idea I liked raw tuna! The entire experience put me out of my comfort zone where food is concerned, but I loved every minute of it,” said Shelia.
But a moment of the meal at Elkano really put Shelia outside her comfort zone. The server asked our table if anyone wanted to eat “collagen” and a few ladies jumped at the chance. After they ate the bite, it was revealed that it was the eyes of the fish called Turbot that we were presented whole and served tableside. “It did taste really good! But I don’t think I could ever eat it again now that I know what it is,” said Shelia.
Carolyn DeMayo was another fish eye taste tester. Carolyn wasn’t a seafood lover coming into this trip but like Shelia, she embraced the experience and tried a lot of new foods. Her husband Andrew Siebert said, “My favorite bite wasn’t my own. It was the ‘collagen’ that Carolyn had. I’m amazed and proud that she expanded her culinary boundaries at least tenfold on this trip.”
In fact, the dish that stood out the most to Carolyn was a trout dish with “liquid salad” and codium, which is seaweed, from Michelin-star restaurant Kokotxa. “I mopped up that liquid salad with my bread, it was so yum!” said Carolyn.
But Carolyn’s heart lies with cheese, so she found the sidewalk cheese tasting at Elkano 1 to be a highlight of the trip. Her father-in-law, Charlie Siebert, would agree and he took a wedge of the blue cheese we tasted for snacking on for the rest of the trip.
In America, we often hear the rule that cheese doesn’t go well with seafood. But the chefs at Kokotxa see it differently. They paired a perfectly cooked scallop with asparagus and a sauce made with Comté cheese, and it was the highlight of the trip for Teressa Parks.
For Rose Walker, the very first stop on our pintxos tour, Bar Txepetxa, will be forever etched in her mind, thanks to white anchovies with spider crab topping. This award-winning bar with pictures of American celebrities like Ethan Hawke and Glenn Close on the walls is known for its anchovy-focused pintxos. Our travelers also tried pintxos with uni, a first for many of them!
Perhaps the most quintessential pintxos, known as “Gilda,” stood out to Pat Parcham. “The Gilda pintxo was a combination of flavors that just popped, and it was such a simple preparation that yielded such flavor,” said Pat. This dish is simply a skewer of a guindilla pepper, a Cantabrian anchovy filet, and a manzanilla olive. This classic was reportedly invented at Bar Casa Vallés in San Sebastián and named after Rita Hayworth’s character in the film Gilda, which premiered the same year. It’s a timeless bite that remains a local favorite!
Another stop on our pintxos tour was at Bar Sport known for grilled Foie Gras, which was Andrea Siebert’s best bite of the trip. But she also enjoyed trying a new fish that locals call “little soldiers” during a rustic lunch at a small restaurant in Pasaia. Andrea also stepped out of her comfort zone by eating fresh anchovies and trying raw oysters on this trip.
Those flatfish in the sole family or “Soldaditos” from Taberna Muguruza were also The Chopping Block trip host Chef Guillermo Delavault’s favorite bite of the trip. “It’s the perfect example of simplicity – just the freshest fish, cooked to perfection with great oil and a pinch of salt, creating a fantastic bite. I could have easily eaten two dozen of them!” said Guillermo.
While many restaurants are seafood-focused in the Basque Country, our travelers also enjoyed meat throughout the trip.
Onward Travel host Andrea Miller will forever remember the beef carpaccio with the creamy extra virgin olive oil ice cream at Villa Lucia Gastronomic Space. It was the perfect bite to kick off the meal and the cold ice cream was somewhat of a surprise since we all initially thought it was burrata cheese. But that savory ice cream was absolutely delicious with the flavorful beef! Rich Walker agrees this was his favorite bite of the tour.
Andrea may have a thing for savory ice cream since the olive ice cream served with anchovies, tomato and a savory sponge cake at Kokotxa also stands out to her as a dish that won’t soon be forgotten.
Charlie Siebert’s best bite of the trip came during the very first meal, lunch at Lizeaga Cider House, where our travelers learned about local cider, tasted it straight from the barrel and enjoyed a traditional Basque meal, including a big platter of steak. “This meat was rare, but not bloody. It had the perfect char and melted in your mouth just like butter,” said Charlie.
Steve Parks agrees. “My best bite had to be the steak at the cider house. That segued into our cooking class nicely where we learned how to cook that type of steak,” said Steve.
That hands-on cooking class at Kookin Donosti was a highlight for many of the travelers. Like Steve said, we learned how to prepare the steak perfectly and serve it with roasted Piquillo peppers, as well as master a traditional cod omelette and local fish, hake in green sauce. We were even treated to a taste test between the Burnt Basque Cheesecake we made in class versus a cheesecake Brandt had picked up from a local store. The one we made in class was the clear winner!
Our travelers didn’t shy away from picking up ingredients in local stores, from canned pâté to tinned seafood to pickled peppers and Espelette pepper to bring home to recreate the magic after the trip ended.
Pat’s bag arrived a day late to her home in Chicago but it contained all of her food goodies from Spain so she whipped up a few appetizers for friends. Kudos Pat!
Studies have shown that people are 50% more likely to try new foods when dining in a group than when eating alone. So, book your next trip with Onward Travel and step out of your culinary comfort zone just like our Basque Country travelers did!
