By the sea > Articles > Basque in Glory

Perhaps it's the impenetrable Euskara language that has deterred weekenders and party people from taking no-frills flights to San Sebastián instead of, say, Barcelona. Or maybe it's the unknown quantity of Basque culture, and the fact that ETA still occasionally leave suspect devices in beach resorts.

Or is it just that northern coast, which kind of faces Portsmouth, suggesting that the Atlantic waters might be freezing (they are not). But we've all been missing out. The País Vasco - the culturally autonomous region that curves around the Bay of Biscay and straddles the western Pyrenees - is not only full of dramatic mountains shrouded in mist, aquamarine seas, quaint villages, and trilingual street signs. It is also a land lavish with its food and drink, and San Sebastián - aka Donostia - is the culinary capital.

Basques shrug off foodie philosophising, claiming: "To know how to eat is to know enough". Nonetheless, San Sebastián is where Michelin stars constellate: there are 15 of them spread out over seven restaurants - that's in a city with a population of just 180,000. Imagine the likes of St Helens with that much good grub. Imagine Johnny Vegas sending back a bottle of wine.

But this has not been a British-style fad. Basque men have been forming Gastronomic Associations, at which amateur chefs test their skills and signature dishes on friends, for decades. In the 1970s, local legend Juan Mari Arzak turned the family eatery into a gourmet restaurant (Arzak, three stars), located on the Alto de Miracruz just east of the centre. In doing so, he launched Nueva Cocina Vasca, which exploits the riches of local sources - especially the hake, tuna, scallops, clams and other fish and seafood that come in on the San Sebastián tide - and subtly enlivens them with variations based on home-grown tomatoes and chillis and with more exotic herb confections.

On a Monday, the classiest in-town eateries are shut so we tripped out to Zuberoa, a two-Michelin starred restaurant in a beautiful 14th-century farmhouse in nearby Iturriotz. Hilario Arbelaitz does the food, his brother is the maître d', and his two sisters did the decor. The menu was sumptuous and fairly daring (we skipped the "calf's snout" and the "jaw with endives") and the waiters were smarter than the clients, but Spaniards are innately informal so no one was poncing around in cummerbunds and cravats.

Needless to say, the meal was as exquisite as it was extortionate. It turned out that most of the diners were specialists: either chefs themselves or restaurateurs from the US and France - as critical as punters come - but they were all too busy taking pictures of each artfully constructed dish and praising the cooking to worry Senor Arbelaitz. The same family has another two-star place in town.

But you needn't blow €100 a head to eat well, as the emphasis on quality has filtered down even to fast food. Eating at San Sebastián's equivalent of the tapas bar - the pintxo - in the vibrant Parte Vieja (old town), or at any of the ordinary restaurants is a treat. Hoteliers will recommend their favourites, but all of them seem to attract residents, and it's fun to try two or three dishes in each, and find the ambience that fits the hour. Along the calle 31 de Agosto, every other hole-in-the-wall bar does the Spanish standards of moist tortilla and peppery serrano ham, as well as fancier bites such as fungi and paté in mille feuille, tongue with béchamel sauce and peppers stuffed with cod or boar, most of them on a slab of fresh baguette, and all costing just €2 to €4. It was loudly announced by the waitress that it was National Sausage Day (May 24), so a few chorizos were in order too. To get some idea of how good all this rustic fare tastes, suffice to say that over the border in France people talk about San Sebastián in hushed tones.

It would be one of Europe's nicest towns even if it was only about the food. But clock this: San Sebastián also has three great beaches - diminutive Zurriola, the grand sweep of La Concha and tranquil Ondarreta, where locals divide their spare time swimming, surfing, diving and indulging in inner-city naturism; it has a brand-new state-of-the-art auditorium (Lou Reed had just done a live show) built by Rafael Moneo; its shopping scene incorporates all the swanky brands and scores of bespoke fashion outlets, delis and handicraft stores; the annual jazz festival and film festival are among Europe's most respected. Outside the Parte Vieja are handsome Haussmann-esque boulevards, hillside parks, a grand prom bustling with families and strolling pensioners in suits and berets, and you can sleep in small, opulent hotels like Villa Soro and Maria Cristina. Locals know their town is special: you can hear civic pride in the scream of pneumatic drills and the clanging of hammers in late spring as the streets are primped and polished for the new season's influx of tourists - these are mainly Spaniards seeking sea breezes and sophistication, so Irish theme pubs and full English breakfasts are in short supply.

Framing San Sebastián and Bilbao, less than an hour's drive west, is an impressive limestone massif clad in pine forests and small farming and cider-making hamlets, which manages to look unspoilt despite the national ambition to drop cranes and residential tower blocks in every vacant valley. The toll-free ruta nacional snakes along the coast through several smart beach resorts, including Zarautz, where the surfing is world-class - and where another internationally renowned chef, Karlos Arguiñano, concocts pricey, "light" Basque cuisine at his eponymous hotel-restaurant. The road also takes in a few rough dormitory towns and massive factory complexes, in case you were forgetting that Euskadi pride is built on centuries of toil generating wealth for Madrid's idle middle classes.

Basque signage travels across the border into France as smoothly as the traffic, and on the coast road between Hendaye and Bayonne you really are in the same country. There are bullfights, plenty of flapping red, white and green Basque flags, and every other shop sells patés and vintage wines (the Riojas gradually giving way to Bordeaux's finest). Between the pre-dessert and the three main desserts at the Grand Hotel, St Jean de Luz, I asked the chef Nicolas Masse what makes the Basque kitchen. "I think it is the authenticity," was his instant reply. "Here in the French Pays Basque there is the influence of Spain, and that takes away any pretentiousness. The main thing for me is my suppliers - of foie gras, of duck, of milk, seasonal vegetables - which are all great. I learnt about using the very best produce when I was with Andrew McLeish at the Landmark and here it is easy."

For such a stylish beach resort just a few miles from Biarritz, St Jean is quite child-friendly, and many of the tourists are French families, making the atmosphere laid-back - and no doubt raising the stakes in the restaurant scene, too. Its lambent luz is famous, and the sunsets, with San Sebastián still visible on the left, are supposed to be the best in France.

Hikers looking for easy walks will get all the green hills they need in and around Ordizia, 20 miles south of San Sebastián, or in Navarra, where the Sierra de Aralar climbs to 1,400m. But there are even bigger peaks, and neither cranes nor factories, immediately to the west. Quiet roads criss-cross the Pyrenees throughout the Basque country and all of the passes should be open from late spring through autumn, though late snows still cause some disturbance over 2,000m as late as June. There are dozens of footpaths for trekking and easy walking, but to burn off some of that snout fat, a two-hour drive takes you to Catalonia's Val d'Aran. Well-known for its ski resorts, favoured by the Spanish royalty, this chink in the high mountains becomes, in spring, a choice destination for rafting, rappelling, horseriding and rambling. If you've managed to learn a few words of Basque or Catalan, forget them - the language here is Aranese, a dialect of the langue d'oc.

It's odd how fashions come and go in people's holiday plans. The País Vasco-Pays Basque-Euskadi has long fulfiled its marginal role, on the edges of two nations, at the political periphery, ignored blithely by British househunters bound for the Dordogne or by Hispanophiles on budget trips to the usual hidalgo hubs.

San Sebastián and the wider region are unique and scintillating, and this is an extraordinary corner of Europe - just don't hold out too much hope of getting your tongue around their even more extraordinary language.

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