6 Things You Should Know Before Pintxo Bar Hopping in the Basque Country

Pintxos in the Basque Country. Sacred like communion in the temple. Even on a gray, rainy Saturday in Bilbao's Casco Viejo, or old town, groups of friends, couples, families, are hopping from tavern to tavern or, berria to berria, scarfing down a pintxo or two, swigging glasses of rioja or txacoli and moving on in the time it took me to take even one of the photographs in this post. Berria hopping would start daily at about 2, 2:30, lunchtime or la hora de comer, and consisted of running the streets, sampling new tastes and savoring old favorites until I felt my belly about to burst. Learning only later in the trip that on the weekend, the Euskal actually have pintxos and wine at 3 or 4 stops, THEN head to dinner afterwards!! Lunch often left me with a sense of satisfaction so palpable that dinner was unthinkable.

There's a science to berria hopping in the Basque Country. A way to do that shit. I wasn't really ready. But you can be. If you're going to the Basque Country, like so many do, to partake of pintxos, pintxos y más pintxos, here are six things you should know going in...

1. Forgo the bread. Bread's just going to fill you up (with empty calories I might add) and limit the amount of fish, prawns, blue cheese, olives, octopus, Iberian ham, and other goodies you can taste. Just lift the goodies up off those hunks of carb, knife...fork...attack! Leaving the bread behind may seem strange to some locals, but this way you can enjoy as many tapas as possible. Now like every rule, this one has it's exception. If the bread's been toasted in olive oil, eat the thing. Or if the pintxo itself leaks any type of yummy buttery, tomato or garlic juices on the your plate, well, you have no other choice but to sop it up.




2. One word: zurita. I'm a lightweight, and normally don't drink much alcohol. But when you're eating your way through the old town, surrounded by locals and centuries old churches, you cannot order a fucking Coke. Drinking wine all afternoon would have me snoozing on the bar in no time, so I went with beer. Except, I kept forgetting the word for 'small beer' in the Basque Country, having never heard this word used in Catalonia or Andalusia. So bartenders kept bringing me pints. If you're a drinker who can hit six bars in the space of two hours and have a pint in each one, bottoms up. For the rest of us non-alcoholics, the word for small beer is zurita. Say it with me: thu-rrrreeee-tah. Zurita. Otherwise, you'll be smashed before you hit the 3rd berria.

4. Ask the bartender. You're standing in front of the bar, every available space covered by a plate of something you have never seen before. What to choose? It's not about just asking, 'What is this?' A rundown of the ingredients won't necessarily tell you anything, especially if you're not accustomed to Spanish food. Ask the bartender, or really, anyone else who may be standing around: ¿Cual me recommiendas?  ¿Cual es tu favorito? or What do you recommend? Which one is your favorite? The Basque take great pride in their gastronomic superiority, and will be happy to steer you in the right direction. If you're sweet, smiley and dare I say flirty enough, the bartender may even gift you their fave pintxo, as happened to us more than once!

5. Take a mornin' pintxo. Most places put out tapas at 10am, so the food you see at 2:30 is the food that's been there, juicy, FRESH, for hours. You may not want to be eating anchovies, or super fishy, vinegar-y things straight out the gate, but a just-made Spanish tortilla, smoked salmon, or Iberian ham pintxo with your cafe con leche is a veritable Basque breakfast of champions.

5. Don't be put off by all the crap on the floor. My very first Basque berria, El Huevo Berria, looks completely normal from the outside. Even sleek. Lots of glass and chrome. A jukebox. Specials scrawled on a chalkboard. Two dark-haired, pale-skinned, pierced women serving a just-after-lunch crew. The place looked so moderna, imagine my surprise to see a guy swallow a pintxo, wipe his mouth on a little white napkin, crumple it up, and drop it right where he stood. I looked down, the floor was covered with dirty little napkins. I put my feet up on the stool, resolved not to look down, and got to 'pinching'. Looked at it as a twist on the sawdust covered bar floor phenomenon. It's just the custom.



6.  Eat fearlessly, but also don't be afraid to not eat shit you simply don't want to. I, for one, think it's lame to eat a cow's ear just to say you ate a cow's ear, and don't believe you can eat your way to being adventurous, exotic, or cool. You are adventurous, exotic, and cool or you're not. Nothing you eat is gonna change that. Eat what will please you. That's what this is about--pleasure. Decadence, even. Don't be afraid to try new things, but nothing cuts a berria crawl short quite like biting into something that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Eat what you like, like what you eat. Salud! And speaking of adventurous eating...

Behold morcilla! Pig's blood soaked rice, stuffed into pig intestine and boiled, if I can remember correctly. It's also made in Guyana. We call it Black Pudding. Sounds gross, but it's oh so tasty. Imagine my surprise to see it in Spain. Food and colonialism...