Café Iruña, Bilbao

Continued from Alhóndiga

I said in the last post that we knew where we'd be going for dinner. Being such late diners (yes, again), by the time we arrived, the one we wanted to sample, which was actually a couple of bars up from Iruña, didn't have many pintxos left. Actually it wasn't that late - only about 10.30pm. On a Friday night.

In the end, we plumped for Café Iruña. At least, it had the reputation. And they were still bringing out them pintxos.

The place was lovely. You could feel, not only see, the decades of tradition. There was a healthy crowd, but not full. We were offered a table without any problems. They had a room upstairs, which I presumed was for when it gets busy or for private functions.

Tonight, that room wasn't used and everyone was seated downstairs or hanging around by the bar. We took a few minutes to soak in the décor of this 300 square metres 111-year-old café-restaurant.

We made the easiest choice and went for the pintxos menu, 12 items for 20€ (it could have been 19€). In  menus, the selection is left to the staff. 

The variety offered to us was fine. But, to be honest, I was somewhat disappointed. The bread wasn't fresh. You can tell that the pintxos had been prepared hours before; if they could have toasted them slightly, I'm sure they would have tasted far better. They were good (except for one, which was rather salty), but they could have been better. I was left wondering if their reputation had not got the better of them and their continued success is based more on their reputation than the quality of their offerings.

My recommendation: yes, it's definitely a place worthy of a visit. It's almost like a tourist attraction in itself, but I'd avoid the pintxos unless you know they've been recently prepared. You could go for their breakfast, or their normal menus, or simple go à la carte.

Next stop, San Sebastian!

Plaza Nueva, de nuevo

Continued from Free jazz at the Guggenheim

As I followed the Nervion River towards Arriaga, I allowed my camera to be seduced, once again, by Zubizuri Bridge, the results of which you would have seen here. This particular attempt didn't make it to that post.

As you would have guessed, by the time I got back to the apartment, it was quite late. Haha. Story of my life. Late to leave in the morning, late to leave in the evening...

Anyway, a quick shower, and time to search for some food. Taking into account the time, the best bet would be...yup, Plaza Nueva, for the second night running. On the first night, we ended up at Inma's. This time, we decided to stop at Bar Charly. It was buzzing, waiters dressed in black, with CHARLY emblazoned across their chest, running around, fighting for space behind the bar, which was still stacked with pintxos at 11.30pm, the time we got in, more or less. Some of their neighbours were already packing up.

One stool available, which was good enough for us. It's quite customary to stand and eat by the bar in Spain, especially if it's busy. And for pintxos, being by the bar is really the best place so you can get served quicker; not only that, you also get to see what the most popular pintxos are, and you get to hear the staff explaining what they are. I never quite understand why they don't label their pintxos - wouldn't that save a lot of Q&As? And for those who don't speak Spanish, it would make matters even that much better! I think I must have seen only one or two bars where their pintxos were labelled with at least the name and maybe their principal ingredients.

One note of advice: if you have the time - a lot of these bars/restaurants have websites - go visit them. Check out their offers, their specialities. I didn't, but I speak the lingo, so it's easier.

I regret to say I didn't take any photos nor took any notes, so I can't remember what we had. All I can say is that the pintxos were quite tasty. We could have carried on eating, but we didn't want to be surprised by the bill later! As it happened, 12 pintxos and 3 soft drinks set us back €25.60, quite good value for money around these parts, I'd say. The only thing is, as I'd mentioned before, pintxos are often served cold. The hot ones are sometimes warmed up, as they were done at Inma's. At Charly's, if I remember correctly, all we had were served cold. Still, all in all, stamped RECOMMENDED!

First lunch

Continued from First Tour.

We'd just come down from Mount Artxanda, and we were hungry. Also it was getting late for lunch and we were afraid we won't be able to find somewhere decent and which was still serving. We walked a bit from the station, looked at a few menus, until we came to Restaurante Zubizuri (Paseo Campo Volantin, 23), the first we liked the look of; there were interesting-looking pintxos on the bar, and the prices were not too off-putting. There was also quite a crowd, so we figured that it must be good, or at least decent.

We went in, asked if we could sit down, were told yes, so we did. No-one came to the table although there were waitresses busying about. Minutes passed by until we thought it must be a self-service restaurant (in spite of seeing waitresses carrying food). Wrong. They offered menu of the day, tapas and pintxos. We weren't even offered the menu to look at, and they had one.

Tired of waiting, and not wanting to leave, we ordered drinks from the bar, took them ourselves to the table, ordered some tapas and pintxos and also brought them ourselves to our table. The cod was good; the rest, sort of average. Price was costly €3.50 per pintxo - I left the restaurant still feeling hungry. Service was non-existent. For us anyway. We left more because of the service than the price. In Plaza Nueva, you can get good service, good food - 12 pintxos cost, on average, €20.

So, pay heed to me. They don't deserve your money. They don't want to work, don't give them any. It isn't a cheap place, so you should expect some form of service at least. Go elsewhere. It could be that the staff were not happy, but that isn't the problem of paying customers.

We left as soon as we could.

Woes were forgotten when we stepped onto the walkway of Zubizuri bridge.

We'd, of course, seen the bridge before, but this was the first time we actually crossed it. It must be the first bridge I've crossed whose walkway is foamed; I felt like taking my shoes off and walking barefoot. Just adds to the sexiness of the bridge - the softness of the walkway, I mean, not my walking barefoot!

Thus, a sexy bridge needs a sexy photo...

The sexiest bridge in the world?

First night in Bilbao

Arriaga Suites charges a supplement of 20€ for late arrivals. I told them we were scheduled to touch down at 20.35 and that we'd be taking the bus and tram so they estimated arrival time to be no later than 22.00. If I arrived later, they would charge me the supplement.

I might have missed the deadline by a little, but there wasn't any charge. :)

We checked in, dumped the bags, freshened up a little, and went out in search for a bite to eat. I was told a lot of places close around 23.00-23.30. This, I later established to be true. Whipped the phone out, Google Maps, GPS on, "Take me to Gure Toki!"

Before I knew it, we were in Plaza Nueva, which was buzzing with late diners, in spite of it being a Wednesday. Unfortunately, Gure Toki was closed. It is not uncommon for restaurants to close in August for their annual holidays. And, just as I was told, some restaurants were already starting to pack up for the night.

We walked around the square, soaked up the vibes and eventually entered a small bar, even though it was almost empty. We weren't in the mood to be among a crowd, I guess. Besides, there were still a fair bit of appetising-looking pintxos on the bar. That could also mean a bad thing, I know.

As so happened many times before, it didn't take long for others to follow us in, and soon the place was filled up! The place was tiny, so that wasn't difficult.

Inma is a family-run establishment which means that the service is friendly and helpful. Inma, I guess, is the name of the lady of the house, who, unfortunately, had a terrible accident a week before. She fell down the lift shaft, I think; I didn't quite understand exactly how it happened. She was going down to the wine cellar, perhaps in the dark and it must have been one of those old lifts where it's just a platform going up and down.

I used to work in a place like that and you have to be careful and always make sure that the platform is at your level and not 20 or 30 metres below! So, I suppose she must have just opened the lift door, and walked into an empty shaft and went tumbling down to the cellar because the platform was still down below!

Broke her hips and all. Terrible. My heart went out to them. The father and son was running the bar without her, naturally. I hope she'll recover well. I don't know how much effect her absence had on the quality of the food, but, aspect wise, it obviously looked good enough for us to walk in.

Pintxos in Bilbao

How on earth did I find out about all that, you may very well ask. Haha. That's the sort of thing you can discover by sitting by the bar and opening up a conversation...

So, what about the food?

The first thing you need to know about pintxos is that pintxo literally means "spike". The fundamental ingredient is a piece of bread, usually hard-crusted, and anything that can be spiked through, on top of it. The toothpicks can get quite long! These days, they don't even bother with the toothpicks or skewers, as you can see on the above image. They're similar to the Danish open sandwiches or montaditos in other Spanish regions. The Basque people, however, have made pintxos their very own art form.

The second thing to know is that they're not intended to be a full meal; more like a snack. A lot of them are often served cold; a few are warm. In most bars/restaurants, they are prepared once or twice a day. So, generally speaking, they may be not as fresh as you'd expected if they've been on the counter for many hours.

The third thing, following on from what I mentioned in the last paragraph, if you're hungry, and you want to just have pintxos, be thinking of anything between 3 and 6 pintxos, depending on the size of your stomach! In other words, they can add up to a bit. As an example, this meal at Inma for the three of us, with drinks, came up to a little over 30€. We probably had about 12 or 13 pintxos between us.

Back to Inma's.

As I mentioned before, service was friendly and efficient. Some pintxos were served warmed up - not sure if it was done by some sort of oven or hot plate, but it made a difference. Taste was generally good. I found the cod a little salty, but it's normal in most places as the cod they use is de-salted salty cod, if that makes sense. The bacalao al pil pil is their speciality. Price is more economical than most of the other eateries in this plaza, which makes it great value for money.

Recommended.