Our short flight out of Dublin arrived on schedule and in no time at all we were in the arrivals hall arranging the bus into the city centre. While we were waiting to get our bus ticket from a automatic ticket machine, inside the arrivals hall – suddenly, a torrential shower kicked off outside, with thunder and lighting. The rain was so heavy, it created a small flood in the arrivals hall. Of course, we were thinking this is not a good start to the weekend from a weather point of view.
Thankfully by the time our bus was nearing the centre, the rain stopped and blue skies appeared. Once towards the centre, we missed our stop and ended up in the bus depot further north than planned, thankfully though, the metro serves the bus depot so we hopped on the metro and got off at our stop which is just a two-minute walk to our accommodation.
Rather than book a hotel, we booked an apartment, which is in a nice spot, it has a small park right across the street and plenty of places to grab a drink and a bite to eat.
The apartment was a decent size, the kitchenette area was small, for a short break, it would more than suffice. We hit the streets for a wander around, but purposely made our way toward the Guggenheim Museum. Although the museum was closed, as it was now coming up on 7:00pm, we had booked one of the restaurants which is connected to the museum along by the river.
The Nerua restaurant is a one Michelin star restaurant, and we had booked dinner for 8:00pm. As we had some time to kill, we walked along by the river taking in some of the sights before making our way back to the restaurant. On arrival at Nerua, we were seated at the chef’s table. When making the booking, I booked the ‘counter’, assuming it was just a counter in the restaurant rather than the chef’s table, so this was a nice surprise.
It was great to see the kitchen in action, it was all very organised and very quiet, add to that all the dishes leaving the pass were assembled like a finely tuned orchestra. We were offered a drink, C opted for champagne, I went with a local beer. We read over the taster menu which had in and around 10 courses on it. One of the main chefs came over, introduced himself and presented us with our fist ‘nibble’.
I’m going to cut to the chase here – this was easily the worst Michelin star meal we ever had – and we’ve had some disappointing ones. For us, most of the dishes were just awful, strange textures, well at least not to our liking, under seasoned and bad tasting to the point where we struggled to eat it. The standout worst dish had to be the lamb’s tongue – the look alone was not appealing. C took one nibble and it was a hard ‘no’. To be polite, I ate a tad more, but it was horrendous. Our chef chum asked did we not like the dish as he took two very full plates away, I just said it was not to our liking, to which he added, you’re Irish, don’t you eat lamb at home? I could go on about how all the dishes disappointed, but I’ll let the photos do the talking.
The food was desperate and the floor staff were not the best – friendly enough but lacked the training you expect from a Michelin star restaurant. We left and headed back to our apartment and popped into a bakery of sorts which was right next door to where we were staying. This would turn out to be a good spot, it’s a bakery by day and in the evening, it becomes a wine bar – baked goods and wine, what’s not to like. We had one drink and called it a night with a plan to return in the morning for brekkie.
Once up, we headed out and as planned, we popped into the Eltreze bakery. As well as baked goods, you can get omelettes, bacon, porridge and other brekkie items. C went with a croissant and some granola and I had the breakfast sambo, all washed down with some very tasty freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee. It was also really good value – more on that below.
Our plan was to go back to the Guggenheim. We had not pre-booked so we hoped we would not be waiting too long to get in. As it turned out, the line was pretty short and within five minutes or so, we were through security and had our tickets in hand. As you could see from the exterior photos above, the museum is impressive, this is reflected inside, with lots of random walkways and rooms varying in size. However, it is a ‘modern art’ museum – and while some modern art is, somewhat interesting, we both found the museum boring. While we had probably planned on spending upwards of two or three hours here, we left just after one.
As it was still reasonably early, we went across to an outdoor café to grab a snack and sit and enjoy the good weather for a bit. Our next plan was to get the bus to San Sebastian to enjoy the many, many pintxo bars. We made our way on the tram back to the bus depot and set about getting a bus to San Sebastian. The journey took a tad longer than we thought. We arrived into a busy San Sebastian and wasted no time and made our way straight to the old town to hit the pintxo bars.
Of course, these days places go ‘viral’, because they do something different and there were several pintxo bars that fit this category. Some had lines out the doors waiting to get in, others, while still busy, not so much. Like lemmings we decided to get in line and hit one of the ‘must visit’, pintxo bars called Café Bar Bilbao. Once in the door, rather than asking one of the staff who were run off their feet, we just chanced a few good looking pintxos. I also had a glass of Catalan cider, which was really not worth the hype. That aside, our pintxos were really tasty, we would have gone back for more but the place was wedged.
However, that’s the way it works, you grab a snack in one bar, then move on to another and another and another and… you get the idea. Several stops later, one thing was evident, the less ‘viral’ spots, were just as good if not better, so top tip, just go to the quieter looking pintxo bars and you won’t be disappointed. After several savoury snacks, we found a nice looking ice cream bar, that just also happed to do frozen ice pops, all homemade, I went with the raspberry one covered in cornflakes and C opted for a small cone with pistachio, both were really tasty.
After eating our way around the San Sebastian pintxo bars, we wandered around a tad more checking out some of the sights before making our way back towards the bus depot to get the bus back to Bilbao.
We arrived back to Bilbao around 8:00pm and decided to crash at the apartment for a bit to catch up on some reading and listen to some tunes. At around 10:00pm, we were feeling a tad peckish, so we decided to pop back into the Eltreze bakery for a late evening nibble. As mentioned above, at this time of the evening it’s a wine bar, but you can still get some baked treats as well as savoury snacks. We decided to share a fried chicken sambo along with a glass of wine for C and a prosecco for me, all for just €11.40, amazing value and the sambo and drinks were fab.
The following morning, we decided to head out in search of breakfast. We made our way towards Bilbao old town, but being a Sunday morning, there were not too many options open, it was just coming up on 9:30am. That aside, we found a spot called Aitaren Boulevard. The interior looked like something you would find in a bar in Bangkok, dark, reds and gold – all it was missing was a disco ball and some thumping music. The place was not very busy but they did do breakfast. We expected breakfast not to be anything special and add to that, two items we ordered, never showed up. Once done, we hit the streets and thankfully things were starting to open.
We spend most of the morning and afternoon doing some window shopping along with popping into the occasional church and grabbing lunch of course – more pintxos. We also visited the Bilbao museum and the Euskai Museum which were both somewhat interesting – it was evident Bilbao does not really do culture things all that well, you’re here for the food after all :-).
Once done, we made our way back to the apartment to relax for a bit. As we had no plans for dinner, we decided to find a burger spot or steak joint. As it turned out, there’s an award winning steak restaurant called Ameran who also happen to have a gourmet burger spot. We arrived at Ameran and checked over the menu, which looked good, however the place was hopping and people were being turned away unless you had a booking. However, their burger spot is right across the street, so we headed there. To say we got lucky would be an understatement, we joined the line and we were the last ‘non bookings’ to get seated.
While the service was slow, but friendly, the burgers were very tasty. They don’t do fries, as such, but they do serve slices of potato that are fried. They also create a sauce with an egg yolk and some mayo along with some other bits. The sauce to be fair was not the best as were the potatoes, but as said, the burgers were very tasty.
We left full and made our way back to the apartment for a good night’s sleep. The following morning, we popped back into the bakery for some brekkie and afterwards, hit the streets to do some last-minute window shopping. Before making our way to the airport, we had time to take the funicular up to a viewing point which overlooks the city – thankfully the weather was nice once up at the top as there was rain earlier.
Bilbao was a very enjoyable weekend, despite the occasional, very heavy shower, it did not take from the weekend. There are so many food options, it can be difficult to pick where to eat, but from our experience – our Michelin restaurant aside – you will be hard pressed to find bad food and what we got was such good value.
Until next time,
Bye for now,
C&J
cjfoodandtravel 