Pintxos in Espana!!!

Hola blog amigos!! If you're wondering why you haven't heard from me in a while, it's because I was on a trip to Spain! We went to lots of restaurants that were very good, but I'm only going to tell you about a few of them, because if I told you about all of them, it would be waaaaaay too many posts.

One of the places that we went was San Sebastian, which is in northern Spain, and our first night there, we went out for something called pintxos. In northern Spain, some people speak Basque instead of Spanish. Pintxos is the Basque word for tapas. Most people in the US have probably heard of tapas, but maybe not pintxos.

My favorite pintxos restaurant that we went to was called Txalupa. Txalupa is the Basque word for boat and that's what the restaurant looks like inside! The staff was very nice and helpful and welcoming. We actually went to this restaurant twice. The first time we went with our guide Clara, who became our friend and lives in San Sebastian, and she ordered for us. But the second time, we went by ourselves and the servers helped us a lot. There is a menu that you can order off of. But there is also a bar with pintxos set out, and you can take whichever ones you want. It was sort of like a pintxos buffet.

These are all the pintxos spread out. Can you see how the restaurant looks like a boat?

Most of the pintxos at the bar were spreads on little toasts. My favorite one was a smoked salmon salad with a little bit of aioli and salmon roe on top. The salmon salad was very very very delicious. They use mayonnaise in many of the pintxos and I was surprised by how much I liked it. My little sister said this one was her favorite too.

San Sebastian is so close to France, that you can even see it! I think that might be why the baguettes that the pintxos were served on were really good.

My second favorite toast had crab meat and egg salad and a shrimp and an olive on it. There were lots of olives, anchovies and peppers in the food that we ate.

I liked how the ends of the toasts were crispy. When we cut up the pintxos, they were the easiest part to hold and eat.

My mom's favorite pintxos was the only one that we had that was like a little sandwich. It had hard boiled egg, smoked salmon, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise on it. It was delicious, but when we tried to cut it up to share, that was a disaster!!! So we had to get another one and just take bites.

This sandwich was like a smoked salmon slider.

Next we had some warm pintxos. We had anchovies served in warm garlic oil and they were the best anchovies I've ever had in my life! Anchovies are one of the five kinds of fish that are extra good for your heart. The acronym is SMASH and it stands for sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon and herring. So we should all eat more anchovies!

I liked the crispy garlic chips too!

Another warm pintxos that we had was hake with squid ink risotto. Hake is a white fish that is similar to cod. The squid ink made the risotto black. That was my favorite part.

I liked how this plate looks like an oyster shell!

If you're ever in San Sebastian, you should DEFINITELY go to Txalupa! I think it is a great restaurant and I can't wait to go back some day.