Grilling in Getaria
The Basque Country
It seems you can eat extremely well anywhere and everywhere in the Basque Country. This coastal green corner of northern Spain famously has numerous Michelin star restaurants (22 in 2023), with 3 featured on The World’s Fifty Best Restaurants list. Creative destination restaurants are to be found in cosmopolitan cities and bucolic villages across the region. Beyond haute cuisine, the generalized reverence for Basque products and culinary traditions means that packed pintxos bars, roadside grills and traditional restaurants offer a level of dining experience beyond what is reasonable to expect. Exceeding expectations, at least gastronomically, has been normalized in Euskadi.
Basque Cuisine
Over the last few decades Basque cuisine has attracted the attention of lovers of good food from around the world. Culinary pilgrimages are made to San Sebastán's Michelin star restaurants and pintxos bars. Visitors have discovered that for the Basques gastronomy is an integral part of their cultural identity. Local products fill ingredient lists from home kitchens to famous restaurants. The bounty of the mild green hills inland and the Atlantic waters include vegetables, wild mushrooms, local cheeses, beef from cows raised on the green Basque pastures, sparkling cider, artisan white Txakoli wine, the fine aged wines of Rioja and of course fresh fish and shellfish.
Whole Grilled Fish
Even in such a remarkable culinary landscape the small town of Getaria stands out. Getaria has been a fishing port since the Middle Ages and remains the most active in the province of Gipuzkoa. Boats large and small bring in every kind of sea delicacy imaginable from the waters of the Bay of Biscay. The daily catch, providing much of the fresh seafood so needed by San Sebastián’s hungry citizens, is also served up at the restaurants lining Getaria’s port area and up in the old town. The archetypical eatery here is the asador, restaurants that range from casual to elegant and specialize in grilling local fish whole over charcoal or wood fires. The most famous delicacies are rodaballo (turbot) and besugo (sea bream). The deceptively simple cooking method allows the flavor of these fine fish to shine through. Some asadores are the simple spots you might expect, but there are temples to the sea in Getaria that few can imagine.
Grilling Fish in Getaria
The asadores got their start grilling freshly caught fish on outdoor charcoal grills, or parrillas, when fishermen brought their catch ashore and wanted to cook the fish the way they did on board their fishing boats. Simple family-run restaurants sprang up and outdoor parrillas were built outside the restaurants. Diners from nearby San Sebastián started coming, as did travelers looking for impeccably pure sea flavors. Turbot, monkfish, sardines, sea bream and lobster are on the menus everywhere in Getaria. The fish are grilled whole in specialized metal cages to keep the fish intact, and prepared with little adornment. So dedicated to the sea are these asadores that some offer not only whole grilled fish but once ignored or discarded parts of the fish such as kokotxas–fish cheeks–and mackerel heads.
Elkano and Kaia Kaipe Restaurants in Getaria
The Basque flair for fine dining is not lacking in Getaria despite the humble origins of its cuisine. The tiny village hosts Elkano, a one Michelin star seafood restaurant that has perfected the art of grilling fish and seafood. Meals at Elkano tend to start with a range of seafood delicacies such as shrimp, crab, or lobster. Then it’s on to the main attraction: pick a fish, have it grilled, and enjoy! Meanwhile at Kaia Kaipe, Getaria’s other most famous restaurant, you’ll find a local classic menu and artful grilling in a less formal but equally joyous environment. One draw at Kaia Kaipe is the wine list, featuring over a thousand different wines including rare old bottles of Spain and France’s finest wines.
Txakoli & the Balenciaga Museum
There’s more to Getaria than fish. The vineyards covering the hills around Getaria are planted with Hondarrabi Zuri, the main grape used in Txakoli, the light white wine often favored to accompany local seafood. Explorer and native son Juan Sebastián Elcano returned here after finishing the first trip around the world started by Ferdinand Magellan. Unknown to many there’s a museum dedicated to Getaria’s Cristobal Balenciaga, founder of the eponymous fashion powerhouse. It’s a town whose history is deeply tied up with that of the whole Basque Country. In many ways, it’s the archetype of the Basque village, beautiful and great to visit but also authentic and productive.
Fish and wine and cheese are the lifeblood of the town, as they have been for generations. As much as things have changed, the importance of the sea and the land is as true as ever here. Rather than the Basque cities, it’s villages like Getaria that best embody the ideals and traditions of a region where a common fantasy is to have a farmhouse in a village where everything you need is produced nearby. To understand Getaria is to get to the heart of what it means to be Basque.