Igeldo jatetxea. Arrain eta Itsaskien berezitasuna

Well, having seen the star rating you would have expected some amazing food and Basque hospitality. However, it seems that numerous people have accidentally and repeatedly sneezed whilst adding the star ratings. Either that or the owner has their families held hostage at gunpoint. Allow me to elaborate…. We arrived and were warmly greeted by a server (name unimportant, but surely is held financial hostage and forced to work off his life debt). Drinks arrived quickly and to be fair the unnamed hostage was very personable. We ordered our starters and they were delivered with suspicious haste. The Calamari was average, the octopus was ok but the sardines were awful. At this point all was forgiven and thanks to the company, the ambience was great. We then waited for what seemed an eternity for our mains, here is where the disappointment and the rudeness began! Upon eventually receiving our mains it was obvious that most of the give a fu**s had clearly been left in the kitchen. The turbot to be fair was actually nicely cooked and was tasty, however, the tuna was what can only be described as a ‘weapon’s grade disaster’. If I wanted to pay for rubbish frozen tuna I would have gone to the freezer section of my local pound land, not the home of Basque gastronomy. There are numerous places here with Michelin stars, the closest comparison would be to say that eating a Michelin car tyre would be more enjoyable. We raised this issue with the owner and the response was quite frankly a master class in passive aggressive sarcasm. We informed him that the tuna was undercooked and still frozen inside. It was, it really was, there are eskimos that would have sent that back to the igloo kitchen. I have never wanted to try a tuna sorbet but I can safely say it will not be appearing in the shopping list again any time soon. I digress… the owner instead of, as you would expect, taking our comments on board and offering some kind of apology, managed to display the kind of hosting skills that made Geoffrey Dalmer a household name. He asked us where we came from and we responded, expecting some friendly chat about our respective origins and exchange cultural idioms. Unfortunately this was not to be, he used our respective distances from the nearest freezer, sorry I mean proximity to the sea, as his metric for how little we knew about tuna. The owner continued to unravel his thesis on the exact way tuna should be served, imagine my surprise when he reiterated that apparently as cold as his hosting skills was the answer. He continued to say that we apparently had no idea how it should be served and in essence called us ignorant. I wouldn’t mind but living in the West Midlands of the UK (as far from the sea as is possible) and having still had better tuna steaks served at roadside crack dens. He was fairly rude to the females in our group and one can only surmise that some kind of Norman Bates issues may plague his clearly difficult home life. We asked for the frozen fish to be taken off the bill and apparently this too was beyond his skill set. Basically, don’t, it’s not very good and matey boy who owns it is ruder and more passive aggressive than the entirety of social media rolled into one frozen nugget of disappointment.

The food started off ok, but the tuna was very bad. We told the staff and he became very rude. Handled very poorly. We were also charged for food we did not receive. We left promptly and should have disputed the bill. The one sangria and one glass of moscato was not a factor.

Worse meal I had in years ! The service was awful and disrespectful, when we mentioned that our Tuna was still frozen on the inside they got very angry and asked where we came from and said we don’t know what a good tuna would be like … Can not recommend that place at all !

Aus Versehen machten wir einen kurzen Stopp in diesem kleinen Laden am Hafen von San Sebastian und bestellten uns Seehecht. Und der war grandios!!! Die Aussicht auf den Hafen ist hübsch und das Personal war sehr bemüht. So wurde aus dem Versehen ein wunderschöner Abend.

Ein nettes kleines Restaurant zum draußen Sitzen, direkt am Wasser. Die Mitarbeiter waren sehr freundlich, das Essen wirde schnell serviert, mein Hund durfte auch mit, das war alles wirklich super. Es gibt nur leider Abzug für die Portionsgrößen und die Fischmenge in der Fischsuppe. Ich muss leider sagen, dass ich woanders für einen Euro mehr bereits einen halben Krebs in der Suppe hatte und nach der 30€/Person Rechnung erst richtig hungrig war. Da wiederum finde ich das Ambiente (draußen am wackeligen Tisch mit Standartstühlen) den Essenspreisen absolut nicht angemessen.

Lovely Monkfish and potatoes for 2. Beautifully cooked with lots of butter and garlic. Service was ok. Great view from the old town of San Sebastián.

Buenad raciones y genero muy fresco

Je suis venu déjeuner 5 fois lors de mon séjour à San Sebastian du 06 au 14 mai dernier. Produits très frais et top qualité, accueil chaleureux et agréable, réservez vos places, car souvent pris d'assaut ! Merci encore pour votre gentillesse, à très bientôt 😉