Arzak, one of San Sebastian’s leading restaurants, doesn’t seem as novel as it once must have been. Indeed I couldn’t shake the sense that the restaurant is resting on its past laurels and coupled with patchy service for a Michelin 3-Star restaurant, our experience was disappointing. I’m hoping that perhaps we got them on a bad day but I don’t think the dishes were memorable enough to warrant trying them again. Especially when there are so many other good restaurants in San Sebastian.

Generally, I won’t blog about a disappointing restaurant but since friends are curious, I decided to post the following pictures – you may decide that it’s still worth trying (they may up their game too and they still rank highly on some restaurant lists). The one good thing is that I found the pricing on Arzak’s wine list to be quite reasonable. We ordered the Vega Sicilia Valbeuna 2008, Tinto Valbuena 2006 and the Unico Reserva 1995. I recall the pricing was lower than in other restaurants that we went to in San Sebastian and Barcelona so we took this opportunity to order these wines that are also a bit harder to find. Unfortunately, Arak’s sommelier was probably the weak link for us – probably tired of all us tourists. Serving confusion led to one of the waitresses pouring the Reserva into a glass of Valbuena for my friend.

Reserving a table online was easy although they did write back and call closer to the date to reconfirm the booking. They were perhaps a bit disorganized as they called me a couple of times within two days and it sounded like they didn’t capture my confirmation the first time around. Arzak’s website is https://www.arzak.info/arz_web.php?idioma=En. They do require credit card details for all bookings. The cost of the tasting menu is around EUR 200 per person. Alas, I think I’d rather use the money to eat at the pintxos bars in the old town.