What Separates a Pintxo From a Tapa, Over Lunch

The question in the title has a real answer, and it explains the city. A tapa, further south in Spain, arrives free with your drink and you take what you are given. A pintxo is ordered and paid for, was originally speared to a slice of bread with a stick, and has been escalating for eighty years because the bars here compete with each other rather than with anywhere else. That competition is why San Sebastián eats the way it does.

Three hours over lunch, ten guests at most, meeting at the taxi rank near the City Hall in front of the Enso bar.

Five pintxos and five drinks. The bars are chosen for being ones visitors do not find on their own, and in each the guide names the pintxo worth having and the drink to take with it, from cider, txakoli or a red.

Most of what you take away is procedural. How to get served in a room where nobody queues. Where to put your napkin. Why one glass per bar and then you leave. Going out for pintxos is a way of socialising here more than a way of eating, and the guide teaches you to do it like a Donostiarra rather than like a visitor holding a phone.

Guided in English. The operator was ranked the tenth best food experience in the world in 2022.