This was our second Michelin Star restaurant in two days. Quaint old building, approximately 600…read moreyears old in a small town outside of San Sebastián. The service was excellent, not stuffy at all. Prices where normal for a Michelin Star winner. If your out in this part of Spain it's definitely worth the drive. We had choose three appetizers, two main courses and two desserts.

Are there really only 7 reviews on this place? I am honored to be able to give a review on this…read moreplace and feel lucky we were able to get reservations and have this experience. As we were seated at our table I felt like a queen. Never had I experienced service like this. I took a look at the tasting menu (which I had originally planned to do) but none of the dishes caught my fancy. I hemmed and hawed at what to order and finally ended up with....the tasting menu. When in Madrid.... This is one of my favorite meals of all time and may be one of the less wordy of the bunch ("maybe", I haven't finished yet). A dish by dish review is not necessary and cannot give justice to the umami that the night unfolded. With each tasting set before me, I kept asking myself - how can you put so much goodness in such a small little dish? For example, one of my favorites of the night was shellfish to the royal with fennel flavour. Shellfish to what? and fennel... not a fan of fennel. Have you ever had something so good that you want to close your eyes and just take it all in with only your tastebuds? This frothy little portion had layers of flavor you couldn't imagine. A few of which I was able to guess correctly as uni and lobster (pat myself on the back). I loved it all. Each dish in and of itself was uniquely astonishing in its own way. To hit on a couple other surprises - the mashed potatoes were the jam. They were a runny thick consistency and when I asked what made them so good, the waitress answered "lots of butter". The cheesecake was like no other cheesecake. So good that it called for an additional order to close out the night. The wines (recommended by the sommelier) were less expensive than any red wines sold in US restaurants (even the cheaper US brands). I was wined and dined - an experience I can't explain other than using the word amazing. Which by the way, I need to find a better word because it was actually better than amazing.

Exceptional on all fronts: food, service, ambiance. One of our Top 10 dining experiences in Europe…read more Topa! RS

Reservations are a must for Casa Camara. I suspect that the increasing number of tourists wanting…read moreto dine there has lead them to institute a policy that they will charge a fee of 30 Euros per person for missed reservations. I received a confirmation email and a phone call the evening before the reservation to confirm. Pasaia is a lovely village and well worth a visit while staying in San Sebastian and is just a 15 minute bus ride away plus the 1 minute ferry ride. The staff at Casa Camara are amazing. They are the picture of efficiency. Everyone knows their roles and they all get the job done well. Service was really good and they have no problem answering questions in English. From the long specials list, we chose the grilled cigala. It's like a langostine. It was perfectly grilled and salted. They were so delicious. The monk fish was firm, flaky, and sweet. Our table was next to the lobster tank below the restaurant floor. As lobsters were ordered, staff would hoist the cages up to choose lobsters for the clients to confirm that it's what they want. For dessert, we shared a cheesecake. It was fluffy and light with berries inside. It was a wonderful lunch at a lovely place. Make a reservation so you don't miss out on the experience.

What a great place for lunch. This is a hotel and restaurant. I started with the ham which is…read morealways great in this region of the world. The cod was my main course - also fantastic. The best part was desert which is a fantastic cheese ice cream. It's awesome!!!

Mugaritz is iconic! It is not the best meal you'll ever eat, it is not the most comfortable you'll…read moreever be in a dining setting, and it is certainly not the most enjoyable time you'll have at lunch or dinner. But we're here for art - Mugaritz is truly an expensive piece of art that you get to experience if you so decide to go! I've been to Mugaritz twice, and each time has been extremely unique. Not one repeated course, and the experience overall felt different. The attention to detail and care with which they make the meal at Mugaritz is just stunning, and the overall ability to interact with a staff that so clearly loves their job is so fun! Most recently we had everything from pig snout to roasted bees to a soup that we made a as a group of diners. Every dish was plated beautifully, had a story behind it, and felt like true performance food art. The wine pairing is such a treat because they bring you wines that are mainly collaborations, and you get to try so much during your journey. If you want a good steak go to Casa Julian, if you want to save money eat pintxos in San Sebastian, and if you want the best meal ever go to Azurmendi - but if you want an experience that is truly worth having, spend 4 hours at Mugaritz - you will not be underwhelmed.

Has anyone seen the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia scene where Frank Reynolds pretends to be an…read moreart collector? That scene exemplifies Mugaritz. To be fair, the service and ambiance were on point. The whole experience has a sense of theater, and we genuinely liked the mold water at the beginning. They clearly know how to create a vibe. But if you're going to turn food into art, the food still has to be legitimately good. Here, it ranged from bland to genuinely awful. Of the entire tasting menu, only two savory courses were actually enjoyable: the sweetbread and the pesto-wrapped item. At one point they served what they described, more or less, as their take on glue: a white, multi-textured concoction topped with caviar. I took a bite and my immediate thought was, "Well, you nailed it." Unfortunately, that isn't really a compliment. Who wants to eat glue? That was also roughly the point where I started wondering whether Ashton Kutcher was about to walk out and tell us we were being Punk'd. We've eaten at plenty of Michelin-starred restaurants. We understand experimentation, and we don't expect every unconventional dish to land. But a .250 batting average is decent in baseball. It's disastrous for a tasting menu. Ironically, one of the best things we ate was dessert. And surprise, surprise, it was created by a guest chef. Mugaritz absolutely succeeded at being interesting. It just rarely succeeded at being delicious.

We went to this place, in part, for a cooking class, and to eat. Chef Alex could not have been more…read moreaccommodating despite the obvious language barrier. He taught us, among other things, the secrets of preparing white tuna and hake. We also learned from his sous chef why snapping potatoes rather than slicing them is important. One of the dishes we helped prepare was hake in EVOO and it was delicious. We also worked on Bacalao Pil Pil, a dish I will never be able to warm up to - but it is certainly important in Spanish Basque Country. Chef's wife was also accommodating - providing us with much needed espresso and demonstrating how properly to pour Txakolina. The long and the short of it is (a) the food was delicious, and (b) the overall experience could not have been better! Would we go back if we come back to this part of the world? In a New York minute!

All was delicious. Highly recommended. Began with pintxos (tapas) Bonito, Croquetas, and Squid…read more(wow) then main dish Bacalao (cod) Ajoarriero one of our best meals in Spain :) besides the view was amazing a few feet from the water overlooking another small beautiful town. It was great!

Beautiful facility, wonderful people, fabulous food, spectacular wine. This was one of two…read moretxakolinas that we tried where the produces uses special nitrogen equipment to process the grapes. This leads to a much less bitter txakolina. This was also the winery with a restaurant and the food was some of the best we had in all of the Basque Country. Coupled with their great wine it was a once in a lifetime experience...which we plan to repeat on every trip we take to San Sebastian from now on. (I'm a food and travel writer trying to catch up after a month long trip to Europe and will post much more about our great experience at Hiruzta once I have a bit more time.)