Borda Berri — Restaurant in San Sebastián

It’s quick, it’s fast, it’s delicious. We arrived about 8pm and got there just in time before the huge onslaught of people arrived (but it was still pretty busy!). I was lucky to hop on a chair by the bar but unfortunately my husband and had to stand the whole meal. It didn’t matter. The lady at the bar barks the orders to the kitchen - it’s really quite incredible the lung capacity that she has. She acknowledges you and will come to you in her own time. You must order the risotto (creamy and delicious - photo attached), the entrecôte, the tomato mozzarella (pictured) and the kebab. Give the white beans a miss. We ordered another portion of the risotto because it was so good. The house red wine is delicious and to be honest it was one of, if not the best, meal that we had in San Seb. Be prepared to be barked at and to queue and to be wait but you will be served eventually and it will be worth the wait! Good choices if you are pescatarian (like me) too. Extremely reasonable...

Absolutely amazing food and a wild experience! Food first: we had risotto with mushrooms, pumpkin soup, hominy with mushrooms, pork rib, veal cheek and beef steak and all were fantastic! The meat was all perfectly prepared, tender and richly flavorful, as were the vegetarian dishes. The experience was wild. The door opened at 1930 with 15 people in line and it is a free for all. No reservations accepted. There were three servers behind a bar, where people crowd in, like in a dance, club trying to order. The server was on it though, taking the order then handing the dishes to me (I’m fairly tall) over the crowd, inexplicably keeping track of what I ordered in the chaos. It is worth noting the menu, on a chalkboard, was in Basque so my Spanish was not helpful. A multilingual American woman we’d seen around helped us out. I cannot recommend this place enough. Far superior to our other pinchos experience last night, leaving us with a great memory of...

ℹ️ No tomato soup in winter, just an FYI. 🙂

The risotto and pig ears were good. We are happy that we had them, but they are not something we will come back for.

The risotto isn’t your typical Italian kind, and has a strong cheesy taste. It’s good, but not something we’d find ourselves craving a lot.

As for the pig ears — our country eats pig ears as a delicacy, and although prepared differently, these aren’t overall better than what we are used to eating.

If you’ve never had pig ears then it could be worth trying. It has a lot of collagen and a thin layer of cartilage inside. They really cooked it through though so the cartilage is very soft as well and not crunchy.

All in all, if we came back to San Sebastián and had weeks to spend then we might come back one day, but if it is just a few days then we will not.

Hopefully these information helps you decide how to spend...