This list comes from six visits to San Sebastian between October and May, when the city is grey, the pintxos are at their heaviest and the tour groups have gone home. It is built around walking distance rather than fame: the bars sit in three clusters you can cover on foot in one evening, and the order below follows the route I actually walk, starting in the Parte Vieja and finishing across the river.
The rule of the crawl is one pintxo and one drink per counter, standing, then move. Table service costs more for the same plate, and sitting down turns a twelve-stop evening into a three-stop dinner. Prices are what I paid last winter, when most pintxos sat between 3 and 4.50 euros.
- Stop one: the tortilla at the first counter on the street. Order the tortilla de patatas and a txakoli, and eat it at the bar rather than waiting for a table. It tells you how runny the kitchen likes its eggs, which is a useful baseline for every tortilla you meet that week.
- Stop two: gilda, the anchovy, olive and guindilla skewer. It is three ingredients on a stick and it is the test of a good bar, because a tired gilda means tired stock. If it is sharp and cold, order a second one; if it is flat, leave after your drink.
- Stop three: whatever is under the glass dome with a number on it. Numbered pintxos behind the counter are the daily specials, and the number is the price in euros. Point, pay, eat; this is the fastest way to see what the kitchen is proud of that day.
- Stop four: croquetas, hot from the back. Ask if they are made that day, because a croqueta that has been sitting under a lamp is the most common disappointment in the old town. Cod or ham are both fine, and you want them just hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth.
- Stop five: grilled txangurzo on toast. Spider crab, shredded and warm, usually ordered by the plate rather than taken from the counter. This is where I stop ordering bread, because the pintxos are doing that job already.
- Stop six: anchoas de Santoña. Ask for them by name and take them on a thin slice of bread with nothing else. The best anchovies in Spain are cured in the Bay of Biscay, and eating them here rather than packaged at home is half the reason for the trip.
- Stop seven: the tortilla turn at the bar with the queue. Every neighbourhood has one counter where people wait three deep. If the queue is moving, join it; if it has stopped for more than two minutes, the kitchen has run out and you should keep walking.
- Stop eight: alubias con berza, the black bean stew. This is the winter dish, and it arrives as a small bowl rather than a pintxo. Order it when you reach the point in the evening where you need something hot, which for me is around the seventh counter.
- Stop nine: cross the river and change register. The bars on the Gros side are larger, louder and better for sitting. The pintxos get more experimental here, so this is where I order the thing I do not recognise rather than another anchovy.
- Stop ten: bacalao al pil-pil, if they have it. Salt cod emulsified in garlic and oil, served warm. It takes a kitchen twenty minutes, so this is the counter where you slow down and let the evening breathe.
- Stop eleven: something sweet from the tray, not the menu. Basque cheesecake, txurros or a slice of torrija; the sweet pintxos are usually made in the morning and disappear by nine. Split one between two people if you have any walking left.
- Stop twelve: finish with a caña and no food. A small beer, standing, at a bar two streets back from the water. This is the stop that decides whether you remember the evening as a crawl or as a dinner, so do not fill it with another plate.
Practical notes that make the route work
Start at seven-thirty, when the counters are stocked and the first wave of locals has not arrived. Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest; Tuesday to Thursday you can walk into anywhere. In summer, book nothing and eat late; from November to March, one or two of the bars on this list take reservations for dinner and the rest stay walk-in only.
Pay cash at the smaller counters, since a few still prefer it for single-digit bills, and keep the tab on the paper the bartender writes on the bar in front of you. Two drinks and twelve pintxos across the crawl came to 62 euros for one person on my last run, which is roughly what a single tasting menu costs in the same city.
If you only have the strength for two of these clusters, take stops one through six in the Parte Vieja and then go to bed early.
How to walk the route without turning it into dinner
Start at half seven, take one pintxo and one drink per counter, and keep moving; the evening falls apart the moment two people sit down for a full plate somewhere in the middle. If a counter is three deep, skip it rather than queue, because there is another one forty metres away with the same gildas and no wait. Cash helps at the smallest bars, and the paper ticket the bartender writes in front of you is your tab, so keep it in one pocket.
Twelve stops sounds like a lot and is not, because each one is a mouthful and a glass. The route is about two and a half kilometres end to end, flat until the river, and it leaves room for the one bar where you stay longer than planned, which is the stop you will remember.