San Sebastián Pintxos Tours
San Sebastián serves the best bar food in Spain: pintxos lined along the counters of the Parte Vieja, txakoli poured from a height, a gilda to start and a slice of burnt Basque cheesecake to finish. Compare the top-rated pintxos tours below, then read our notes.
Formats: evening pintxos crawls through the Parte Vieja and Gros with wine and cider pairings; food tours with a local; Basque cooking classes with a cider or txakoli tasting; day trips to Getaria and the Rioja.
What you will taste: the gilda, txuleta, grilled turbot, foie, cod, txakoli, Basque cider, and the burnt cheesecake that was invented at Bar La Viña.
Price and time: roughly 115 to 160 dollars for two and a half to three hours; the city’s pintxos are pricier than mainland tapas, and worth it.
Pintxos, not tapas
In the Basque Country the bar snack is the pintxo, and San Sebastián raised it to an art: elaborate constructions on bread held with a skewer, plus a menu of hot pintxos cooked to order. You take what you want from the counter and order the hot ones, drink a txakoli, the sharp local white poured from a height to aerate it, or a Basque cider, and move to the next bar. The gilda, an olive, anchovy and guindilla pepper on a stick, is the original pintxo and the way to start.
Where to go
The Parte Vieja, the old town, has the highest concentration of pintxo bars in the world; Gros, across the river, is the locals’ quarter with the newer, more creative kitchens. A guided crawl covers both and steers you to the bar that does each pintxo best, which matters, since every bar has a speciality.
Beyond the bars
Basque cooking classes teach the pintxos and the grilled fish with a cider or txakoli tasting; Getaria, half an hour west, is the txakoli village and home of the grill restaurant Elkano; the Rioja is an hour south for wine, see our Rioja wine tours.
Frequently asked questions
Are pintxos free?
No; you pay per pintxo, and San Sebastián is dearer than the rest of Spain, but the quality is the highest in the country.
What is the burnt Basque cheesecake?
La tarta de queso, invented at Bar La Viña in the Parte Vieja: crustless, deliberately scorched on top, soft in the middle. Every tour ends there.
Pintxos tour or do it alone?
A tour for the first night, because each bar has one thing it does best and a guide knows which; after that, wander with the list.
Read next: Tapas or pintxos, and which neighbourhood
How we choose
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