Pintxos come in all shapes and forms in terms of how they are offered, stylized and how important they are to every place. Of my six meals in Bilbao, I had pintxos for four of them, including both of my dinners Thursday and Friday night (Azurmendi being the other dinner). At those times, things get crowded, and there is also the unknown of when places stop giving pintxos, especially on Thursday, with the continuing trend of bars staying open a good hour after they stop selling food.
But the food, oh the food. The first spot was actually an accident - arriving early into Bilbao, I had some extra tikme to kill before both my AirBNB opened up and my work day started. I googled for a few names near the bus station as I had my suitcase, and foudn a spot named Kami, which was a tiny but well furnished bar serving some truly gourmet tapas. I call these tapas becasue they weren't classic pintxos (stuff over bread), but were incredible, from eating a mussel and seawood broth in a mussel cracker, an incredible mushroom quiche and the one thing that was the most like a pintxo, a braised oxtail stew with a smoky, chared red pepper on top. This was a random spot, not near most of hte heavy pintxos/bar areas, and it was excellent - a great way to start.
The other pintxos lunch was on Saturday, where I didn't want to eat too much before Azurmendi at night, and went to maybe the opposite of Kami, a super well known pintxos bar that has maybe turned it into a science, named El Globo right in the heart of the new town. El Globy has four bars, one on each side which is really two pairs of two (as they offer the same pintxos). Like most, you just squeeze into a spot on the bar top and call out what drink you want (cervezas, poured ice cold each time), and which pintxos you want. Here I got a few - a lovely fried squid and caremalized onions, a squid ink gratin (lovely cheesy and messy), a smoked salmon and crab, and a txistorra (a long, thin sausage). These were all quite familiar, but the incredibly throughput of El Globo was amazing.
My two tapas dinners were a bit more of me roaming around the old town, starting at Nueva Plaza, a lovely little old square that I didn't realize until I went there that I had gone there in 2021 when my friends and I went on a similar pintxos crawl. My first stop this time was definitely one of the ones we went to last time, Bar Bilbao, with its notable blue tile interior and similar to El Globo set-up, a place that was mostly just spinning pintxos. They were closing soon, so didn't have the full selection but still ahd some great ones - a little duck crepe with raspberry, a duck and brie, a jamon, egg and red pepper, and then a small duck wrapped in nori. The beer here was also about as cold and refreshing as ever.
From there, I walked around the old town trying to find places still open, which was Berton, which is the first foray into a different type of pintxo restaurant which is where it is a a-la-carte restaurant with a full menu, but also serves pintxos and some raciones (appetizer size things, I guess) in the bar area. There's a lot of these, including Berton where I came too late to order steak cooked in a little charcoal grill table-side, but could get a few more skewer type tapas. That wasn't enough, so I found a brillaitn little spot that I went back to on Friday Night as well, which is Taska Beltz.
Hard to describe really, it is more of a bar, with two super gregarious bartenders/owners. Their main offering are vermouth based cocktails made from their own local vermouth. They also have a great wine collection. And of course they have food - no tapas but larger raciones, including a set of 5-6 meat and seafood dishes cooked in this brilliant pepper-based sauce in a clay pot. I got on Thursday pieces of pork belly slathered in this, which was incredible. Friday was a set of mussels which was good, but the freshness of the mussels salinity didn't mix perfectly. Still, the scene itself was great - the best being when one of the bartenders jokingly yelled at two foreigners who came in asking for Sangria that no they don't ahve it because Sangria is Spanish and they are not in Spain.
The last stop to talk about was Victor Montes, which is in the Berton sense of it beinga very well established restaurant in the Plaza Nueva, but has a large pintxos part as well, where I got a few goodies, one with a txistorra baked into a roll, then a great one with two duck dumplings and pickled onion, then a jamon queso and ham croquette, and finally a fried squid. Victor Montes was probably the platonic ideal of this mix of the restaurant.
The food is amazing in Bilbao and eating at these pintxos spots to some degree involves some drinking (though not required), and generally goes to about 11pm-12am, which helps paper over the fact they're cocktail game, at least in Summer, is pretty non-existent. There are a few named spots, but the most convenient to get to, Puente, was oddly closed both times I went around 12am, despite theri website very clearly saying their closing time was 2am. And much like Toledo, most clubs are shut for summer (and there was no Circulo del Arte). No problem, however, because the beer game in Bilbao is wonderful. I've already talkeda bout the super cold draft copas in the pintxo bars, but even beyond that had some incredible spots.
My favorite was Mumbo Jumbo Taproom, which has ten taps, all Spanish craft beers including five of their own (Mumbo Jumbo), including both an amazing hazy and a graet porter. It was a place right off the river, with just a graet set-up, great set of people and very much after my heart. Equally nice was Sunset Blvd, a bar in a sea of bars on a stretch right as you get to the old town frmo above, which has an amazing beer bottle collection, from various Spanish craft beers to tons of imports, including Delirium, and this weird device that allows you to basically take a Guiness can and mkae it into an imprmptu draft. And then to end the night was Skulls Metal Pub, so picked because of the great music, the interesting crowd, and that they had AC. They also had two local IPAs in bottles, and the bartender was a great guy. In the end, Bilbao is more about the food than the nightlife, but the nightlife wasn't bad just more low-key, which is again not a bad thing.
And of course I will cover Islares and Azurmendi in a separate post, but needless to say, both were absolutely excellent, and really helps pair the Pintxos and Tasting Menus approach to Bilbao, which I do think is the way to go, and put a capstone on this great, weird, trip.
