Restaurante Zelai Txiki — Restaurant in San Sebastián

visited due to the green Michelin star.

the four of us spent ~300€ on food and drinks had various starters, mains and dessert.

the restaurant uses good quality ingredients, but the execution is mediocre at best

problems: one starter was the grilled octopus, the tentacles were full of sand. the foie gras was OK, but it was nothing special, supermarket bought delivers the same experience; the dressing was tasting better, but that's not what one would order that dish for. hake was fresh and good quality the dish itself was absolutely basic, swimming in the green sauce, aka fat, and it didnt have much of a taste. the spider crab is not worth it at all, stew/lasagna like dish tasting a bit lke crab pigeon: the well done version was actually really good, although it was "rose". the regular one was basically blue. desserts: we had to order the french toast in advance. despite that, it was not properly prepared, it was way too wet, and the "curd"/ crust was way too sweet service: we got the bread refilled all the time, and the dishes were served at the same time, also warm, but basically that's it, so delivered the absolute minimum one would expect.

at this price range this restaurant simply cannot provide the experience one would expect, hence would not recommended. better tasting food costing half or 2/3 of the price tastes much better in the city. the ingredients were actually good, but it would be time this restaurant learns how...

Honestly, for the price and the Michelin green star hype, I was very disappointed with our dining experience here. I usually love green-star spots, so I brought my parents and husband here instead of booking one of the actual Michelin-star spots — and we very much regretted it. We’ve had better meals at regular, non-Michelin, hole-in-the-wall spots on our Spain trip.

It all started very well with a friendly greeting, seating on a beautiful veranda, a great wine recommendation at a reasonable price, and beautiful food presentation. It went downhill pretty fast though. The sommelier completely disappeared on us at one point, with us sitting with empty wine glasses for 15+ minutes (and he didn’t even finish pouring my glass after I tasted the wine, much less refilled any glasses). The rest of the staff disappeared as the rest of our meal went on, too. Someone took the dessert order “for the table” — but only wrote 2 of 4 down, so half the table got dessert much later — after we managed to even hail someone down to say this.

The food was overall nicely presented — but very hit-or-miss on flavor. Cool ideas for unique ice cream flavors on several of the apps — but no spice, salt, or flavor on the lobster carpaccio. Seems like not even salt or pepper on the squid “pasta.” Somewhat dry and under-seasoned lamb, definitely dry and under-seasoned tuna steak (taco), and only the pigeon feeling like it was there in flavor (albeit almost...

We had the most wonderful dinner at this charming hillside restaurant tonight. We ordered an intriguing starter of anchovies with an olive “ice cream” that was so interesting and delicious. The monk fish was the best we have ever tried and was served with potatoes and string beans. The restaurant makes homemade whole grain sourdough bread and served it with a fresh mustard butter, which we enjoyed despite knowing dessert had been ordered. We told our waiter, Ahmed, that we enjoyed Muga wines and he brought four selections of them. He then decantered it...terrific! He recommended a brioche French toast, which didn’t sound as good as some of the other selections on the menu, but we trusted his judgment and were absolutely not disappointed. He also had overheard we had been married 45 years and brought the dessert topped with “45” candles and “Happy Anniversary”, along with two glasses of sparkling wine. Needless to say, we loved the service in this hillside, charming restaurant. When we raved about the food, the cook came out to thank us as we got into our taxi. The night, food and service could not have been better. We hope to come...