Pintxos in Casco Viejo - Bilbao

Every Friday night, the students of Instituto Hemingway go out into Casco Viejo to sample ´pinxos´ the local form of tapas. Usually each pinxo is made up of a piece of bread topped with a tasty local delicacy, be it fish, meat or vegetable. The pinxos are spread across the bar on large plates and customers generally help themselves on a small plate and pay once they have chosen a selection of pinxos. Casco Viejo has many such bars, and at the more popular ones, it is often difficult to get near to the bar due to the number of people!

We start the night at Café Bar Bilbao in the vibrant, busy square that is Plaza Nueva. On this particular night the area is busier than normal due to a chess championship taking place in the centre! The pinxos from Café Bar Bilbao are beautifully made and very pleasing to look at, it almost seems a shame to eat them. There are no labels to tell you what is in them so we fill a plate with those that look appetising and take them outside into the square, as the night is very warm. We are a very mixed group tonight with students from America, England, Germany, Poland and India. The pinxos go down well, although the majority are fish and seafood, which some of the less adventurous among us choose to avoid.

From Plaza Nueva, we move on to Bar Irrintzi in Calle de Santa María, a tiny bar that some of the students have discovered a few weeks before and that has become a real favourite. The pinxos here are more sophisticated and interesting but again, beautifully served. Those who have been here before hastily recommend a mini pork and pineapple kebab, served in a glass with a Dijon mustard sauce which is very tasty. Another interesting pinxo is a piece of duck, topped with a slice of fried apple and served on bread with peanut sauce. This bar is more popular with our group than some of the more traditional ones as it serves all manner of meat and vegetable tapas as well as the fish, whilst many of the other bars seem to serve predominantly seafood. All this is washed down with red wine and the streets and bars grow more and more crowded as people sit, stand, eat, drink and chat, winding down from a week of work and beginning their weekend.

Maddie Taylor