Hondarribia and Gastronomic Society

We’ll visit Hondarribia, the town with two faces that looks out over the beaches and cliffs of neighboring France. It is advisable to go with a happy stomach because we will get to know (and enjoy) a gastronomic socieded from the inside. How? Eating, drinking, toasting and celebrating life like the Basque people.

There are shorter routes to get to Hondarribia from San Sebastián, but we we’ll travel along the most beautiful: the panoramic road of Mount Jaizkibel, the third highest coastal mountain in Spain. We’ll take the opportunity to explain a few things about this route of sailors, pirates and the best modern gastronomy.

Hondarribia, 2-in-1 village

The advantage that Hondarribia has is that it’s a single town that seems like two: one a medieval fortress located on the highest ground (with thick walls, cobblestone streets, slopes, wooden balconies full of flowers, an ex-palace of Emperor Carlos V that hides tapestries based on paintings by Rubens...); the other, a typically Basque fishing village (white houses, colored windows, a large tree-lined esplanade where fish used to be sold, tiny bars with dreamy pintxos...), today a gastronomic hot spot. Because of the former (for being fortified) Hondarribia has witnessed dozens of battles; because of the latter (its fishing port), Hondarribia has witnessed something much better: how its bars and restaurants have become a global point of gastronomic reference, praised even by the New York Times.

Basque “txokos,” Season One

What is a gastronomic society? Very simple: a place with a professional kitchen and spacious dining rooms, where Basque food lovers (who are not professional chefs) have gathered for decades to eat, drink, talk, sing and much more. Any time, any day. Although gastronomic societies are private clubs, Ikusnahi gives you the possibility of participating in this local cultural event so that you eat (if you can), drink (if you can), sing (that's easy) or laugh (that, too) like a Basque.

The real thing

We’ll be welcomed by Fernando, a Basque version of Obélix who, it is believed, fell into a pot of marmitako as a child and gained a superpower for the love of cooking and food in all its forms. Fernando will prepare us an authentic Basque dinner using typical seasonal products (and local, of course!), vegetables from the orchards of Hondarribia and fish from the port market that we will have visited at dawn (the fish get up early, what are you going to do?). The menu? Simple and delicious as the very essence of Basque cuisine: anchovies, garden tomato salad (you know, those tomatoes that still have a tomato flavor) with small-batch home-canned tuna, baked monkfish and, for dessert, pantxineta (a cake typical of Gipuzkoa with puff pastry, cream and toasted almonds).