Pintxos and wines by the glass June 18, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Travel , trackbackI think I’ve got the hang of bars here. You walk into a bar, order a glass of wine, and help yourself to the fabulous array of small things on bread, or wrapped, or filled peppers which alighn the bar.
But something was wrong. The wines were awful, and I saw other people getting different ones. And it feels a bit odd just helping yourself to food.
With the wines, apparently most bars will have a number of fairly set varieties available by the glass. Rather than just ordering white or red, you can order in grades - crianza (2 years in the barrel), reserva (5 years in the barrel), gran reserva (longer, and less likely in a bar) - or by variety - Bordon, Cato from Rijoa for reds, Txakoli, Rueda for whites.
And while it is fine to just take the pintxos, you can have a plate, and put 3-4 on it. Apparently locals don’t do this, they have one glass and one pintxos per bar, and the evening becomes an extended pub crawl. The glasses are small though so its not as bad as its sounds. Most measures seem to be about 125ml, unlike the ridiculously large 175ml minimum in the UK.
Thanks to my ‘individual class’ tutor at the language school (more on this later) I have now practiced the whole coversation, and tried again this afternoon, with much better results.
me pones un Bodron = May I have a glass of Bodron
me cobras? un bodron y dos pintxos = I’d like to pay for a glass of Bodron and 2 pintxos.
Don’t use please and thankyou, they think its odd the way we say it all the time.
Technorati Tags: san sebastian, pintxos, ordering
Comments»
Did someone say ‘pintxos’? ‘Txakoli’? That means you must be in San Sebastian.
Sounds like you’re getting on well enough… say hello to Donostia for me - which teachers do you have?
Top tip from Our Man in Donostia: ‘Aldanondo’ on Euskal Herria. Richard reckons it’s the best Basque grub he’s found in the five or so years he’s lived there (the wine list is good too).
[...] Dom’s friend recommends the Aldonando, and I’ve tried for two nights now, but suspect it must be closed for holidays. Either that or it opens very late and as I came by at 11pm tonight, it must be outside even the normal extraordinarily late Spanish dinner times. Fortunately, the Astelena, over the road proves to be very good. [...]