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.

The family who owns our gorgeous Airbnb made us a reservation at Zuberoa for our anniversary and…read moreafter peeping the menu and the photos of the lovely stonework building I got super excited. It's a bit of a trek from San Sebastián proper (20ish minute cab ride) but well worth it to try a meal from Chef Arbelaritz, who is well known in the region. I didn't find the menu too "out there" in terms of creativity. There's always the risk at a Michelin meal that you'll be eating 7 different colors worth of foam, but in this case familiar things like tuna tartar and quinoa made unique appearances. I wouldn't say my mind was blown but everything was certainly tasty. Our servers tended to switch off, but were very attentive. We opted to try the tasting menu, which consisted of: Tuna Tartar Spider crab and prawns ravioli Lobster, cauliflower and fennel Egg yolk, foie-gras cream and mushroom emulsion Stir-fried squid and gelatinous broth "Pelayo" style Red mullet, celeriac, and quinoa Roasted suckling pig, mashed potatos and cumin flavoured fruit compote (which I had) Roasted pigeon, liver toast and turnip filled with mushrooms (which the huband had) Macerated apricots in amarette and lemon and mint sorbet Hazelnut crocanti with hot chocolate Note! I was beyond full by the time the entrees came out, so definitely come hungry. No wine pairing was offered with the menu but they made it happen when we asked and they pretty cool about honoring our request to begin with a local Txakoli wine. With the wines, a bottle of water, tax and the two tasting menus the total was €344. Bonus points for the tooth brushing kits in the restroom!

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.

I had the best experience at Casa Camara. The service was excellent & the seafood was to die for…read more The restaurant is right on the water & wherever you sat you could see the water. They have a hole in the middle of the restaurant that goes straight down to the water and they keep their fresh lobster in cages. Whenever you order a lobster they wheel the cage up and you get to select which one you want. We stayed in San Sebastián & drove to the small town to eat. You do need to walk a little ways to find the restaurant but not very far. They also have an amazing view of the water in this town. I highly recommend going for a little walk/hike afterwards.

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.

A very interesting experience (9/2023), giving Mugaritz 4 stars. A very influential place/chef, it…read morewas a bucket list type place so all of the poor reviews and friends' advice couldn't stop me from seeing it for myself. Like others have said, they try to give a unique experience, saying they don't follow a traditional fine dining format, but more just serve you textures and temperatures in no particular order - somewhat true, but the meal did still follow (albeit loosely) the standard, with light bites followed by more substantial entree type dishes, and a little sweet to end. There were few courses where utensils were provided, most of the meal was to be experienced with your hands. The menu was definitely an experience, and it's sort of masochistic - they don't want you to like everything, and pushed us to tell them which dishes/courses/flavors/anything we didn't like. Overall though, the food was mostly good. Nothing with flavor that will blow you away, but the creativity I do greatly appreciate, and I've been to enough of these dinners where something weird and off the beaten path like this is appreciated. There were a couple courses that unfortunately fell flat in terms of flavor, and of course they were the 'weird' courses too - the milk from a fake boob was flavorless and made a mess, the cider "skin" peeled from the face had no flavor and fell apart, making this course basically one where you have to pick up sauce with your hands and eat it. My main issue with the experience overall was the service. Maybe they were understaffed, but it was just bad. The cups are wooden, so servers can't tell that they're empty unless they're standing over them basically. They wouldn't serve a dish unless they had two people ready to serve them simultaneously, which resulted in multiple times where the food was sitting by our table, with one server awkwardly trying to flag down another so we could be served - one of these took like 3 minutes which was very weird. They made a whole spiel about the wine experience where you choose a painting from a booklet and give them keywords to help them choose a bottle for you, but they took that booklet and never asked us about it again so I guess they didn't wanna do that. The wine list is very short, the sommelier couldn't tell us much about the wines we asked about. Also there was one sommelier for the entire service, and the servers refused to pour wine for us so we would sit empty for long periods of time, and the wine was out of our reach where it would be weird to get up and pour our own. We asked one server multiple times to refill our glasses after an extended period of time, and he reluctantly poured the wine, except he did so into my cup with water in it? Barely an apology, no fresh water cup offered or anything. Just very weird stuff from a 2 michelin star/world's best restaurant, where consistency and attention to detail are typically the standard.

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.)