With my last days in Madrid I wanted to make sure to hit a few restaurants that my local friends had told me about. I sat at the bar at Bar Tomate for a light-ish dinner of Spanish Tortilla and a spinach salad with goat cheese and mangos. Great restaurant, really good food and atmosphere.

My friend Tori arrived on Tuesday morning. I knew she would probably be jetlagged so we took it easy – walking around Madrid, visiting the San Miguel Market, the Christmas Market in Plaza Mayor, going for a rooftop drink for great views, and then dinner at Ten Con Ten, another restaurant I had heard great things about. The food was standout, the people watching amazing, and the Michael Jackson cover tunes unforgettable. We especially loved the Squid Ink and rice, and the vegetable terrine with fried egg.

After Tori’s first day in Madrid, we rented a car to head north. We decided to spend a night in Rioja, a wine region, on our way up to San Sebastian and Bilbao. We got a late start, realized that this dummy left her drivers license in LA, and then had your typical navigation issues, which led to a much longer day of driving than expected, but all good fun nonetheless. We have a very cute VW Polo accompanying us on our drive and Tori is handing the drive in stride!! Unfortunately our long drive meant no wine tastings for us – just a walk around the walled city of Laguardia (yes, like the airport) and dinner in a local tapas bar with some locally-made wine.

We visited the Frank Gehry designed hotel, Marquis de Riscal as well as the Ysios vineard, all very cool looking buildings that we were very excited to take lots of pictures of!

And today we headed to San Sebastian, with a short stop in Pamplona. Yesterday’s navigation issues were a thing of the past as we made our way from one city to the next like true Spaniards…a real feeling of accomplishment!!

As soon as we arrived in San Sebastian we both fell in love with it. It is the most charming beach town, with down to earth people and truly amazing food. We signed up for a tour of the Pintxo bars (think tapas, but these are unique to the Basque region of Spain), and got lucky – it ended up being a private tour for the two of us. Our fantastic guide, August, showed us the best pintxos in Old Town and enlightened us with other fun facts and history of the city. August gave us insight into the Basque culture, including the local cooking clubs that are very similar to country clubs that we have back home, only for cooking and entertaining. We went to 6 bars on the tour, had 1-2 pintxos per bar and a glass of either wine or cider at each as well. Needless to say, I’m now writing on a very full belly!

The photos above speak to the order that we had each pintxo . We started with some grilled shrimp topped with an amazing sauce that had onions and bacon in it. And next we sampled the first-ever pintxo to be created – a skewer of olive, a green pepper and an anchovy, meant to be one bite and named after Rita Hayworth’s provocative movie, Gilda. I hate olives and somehow I thought this was delicious! Next up was a plate of Foie Gras with a grilled onion and a peach puree, followed by a scallop in a cream sauce flavored with coffee and topped with dried seaweed. At our third stop, Zeruko (coming to NYC soon apparently), we had the most inventive and molecular pintxo of the night – eel with trout roe and rosemary smoke. You can see in the pictures that it was first served with the glass dome to hold in the flavor of the smoke, and then we lifted it to eat our 1 bite (it took me two) of deliciousness. Our fourth stop felt like a sleepy little place when we walked in, but quickly turned into a hostpot. It was the only bar we went to that didn’t have its offerings on the bar for your taking, but instead had a chalkboard menu on the wall to order from. We had a veal cheek with sea salt and a chickpea puree, as well as duck confit with artichoke and mushrooms. Our last savory stop of the night was for a risotto with a Basque cheese and mushroom, followed by an amazing sirloin steak bite with a little mild pepper on top. Lastly, for dessert we went to a bar where you apparently go to see and be seen. Cinnamon Creme Brulee, Bread Pudding and a dessert wine, followed by a Gin & Tonic for Tori (the biggest G&T we’ve ever seen mind you). Our tour was now complete and August bid us adieu.

In our best Basque, we thanked him by saying “Eskerrik Asko” and waddled home stuffed to the gills.

Tomorrow we have a day of a lot more food planned in San Sebastian. Not quite sure I’ll have digested in time, but I’ll have no choice but to push forward.