Just a Little Pintxo...

Bilbao, Spain

December 6, 2007
N43°15.788
W002°56.103

The Spanish typically eat their dinner standing at a counter with a glass of wine or beer. An evening consists of visiting several pintxo bars, where you can grab a small bite to eat, and wash it down with a glass of local wine. You can try one or two items at each place, normally the bar’s specialties, and then move on to the next bar for a few more bites. It’s like a continual Happy Hour with outstanding finger food; not shitty, reheated Vienna sausages, stale nachos, or deep fried jalapeno-poppers like you tend to find in the States. Over the past few nights, we avoided the urge to stay at one place and pintxo hopped along with the locals on a quest to find the best of the best.

Pintxos consist of a small slice of bread, normally a baguette, upon which various toppings are placed (fish, cheese, meat, egg, vegetables, etc.). The quality of toppings tend to vary from bar to bar (gourmet to very simple), as does the price, it all depends on the quality of the ingredients and of course the popularity of the bar.

For example, at one place we had delicate mushrooms, sautéed in olive oil, topped with crunchy toasted garlic and a slice of Serrano ham. At another place tuna was mixed with spicy gourmet mustard and topped with anchoas, or anchovies, and oregano. One more hop and we found slices of Spanish bacon with a perfectly cooked quail egg on top. Now that is bacon and eggs! There are some delicacies too, like foie gras… yummy!

My favorite part of hopping from place to place is you never have a big plate of food in front of you, but instead you just nibble. Even though we try something new at each bar, we’re still eating a lot less than we normally would, but probably drinking more wine J.

We scoped out a few more places for tonight, our last night in Bilbao. The good news is, the pintxos will only get better when we move to San Sebastian tomorrow… reportedly the best pintxos in the world!