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The Food of Bilbao: Set Menus & Bread Will Destroy You

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     Basque country is the land of pintxos, little bar food snacks which are kind of like tapas but are mostly on pieces of baguette with toothpicks sticking out of them. All the coolest places in Bilbao have bar tops covered in pintxos and rooms packed with people drinking and socializing and helping themselves to the various pieces of decorated bread. But you cannot be one of those people if you are vegan. No sir, you will miss out. 

     Okay, it’s not entirely true. If you can speak medium level Spanish and/or you did your HappyCow research more thoroughly than I did, you can probably find a place serving vegan pintxos. And hey, I tried. I really did. But unfortunate turns kept turning: bartenders and servers couldn’t understand my Spanish (or pretended not to understand, maybe trying to be more like the French?), or they didn’t know what I was talking about with my dietary restrictions (Sacre bleu! What do you mean no cheese!), or the places with supposedly vegan options were closed when I went while the sun was still sort of visible because ain’t nobody in Spain working while the sun is out! So, point is, I didn’t get pintxos. 
    That doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m sure you will have better luck and/or do better research and/or speak more coherent Spanish. But you know, I’m not even upset. I eat a lot of bread in my normal life so missing out on bread topped with this or that while pushing through people drinking alcohol isn’t that big a deal to me. The only thing is, if you aren’t eating pintxos in Bilbao, you are eating a set menu. Even for lunch! Even if you just wanted a light lunch somewhere, you will be greeted with a three course set menu. Sure you could probably order a la carte but who knows what that would bring you. Whereas, with a set menu in Bilbao, you know you are getting green salad (lettuce and onions, oh my!), grilled vegetables, and fruit. Now, I’m not knocking salad, veggies, and fruit. That’s pretty much my favorite stuff. It’s just that for the most part, their efforts to serve a vegan resulted in very uninspired food, and at various restaurants I was given nearly identical meals. Oh, and there will always be a basket of bread on the table, and you will eat too much of it because it’s bread on the table. 
     When we first set out in Bilbao, it was super late at night, like past normal bedtime, which means that all the restaurants were just starting to open. We struggled to pass through the streets overflowing with drunk yoots and went into several bars and restaurants trying to find a menu to decipher. But most of the places we entered were serving pintxos, not regular menus, and all of their little breads were topped with meat and cheese. After a few blocks of this, I started to get really anxious and nervous. And hungry. (There was a Subway, though, as there always is, so I found comfort knowing that if all else failed I would be able to get shredded lettuce and green peppers on their stanky bread.)
     Finally, one bar serving pintxos said that they were serving their regular menu in the dining room, and that they could accommodate a vegetarian. (Advice: Always start by saying vegetarian. Most people don’t know the word vegan (even in English speaking countries, don’t assume that’s a household word) so figure out with the front of house staff if they can serve vegetarians and then make sure with your waitron that stuff doesn’t contain dairy and hipsters’ souls. That’s been the route to success for me.) This oasis of a restaurant, called Busterri, had a pretty fancy white tablecloth dining room that was empty when we entered but pretty full by the time we left (like after midnight, oh Europeans). 
    First of all, how hilarious is that image on the water bottle? Oh, that’s another thing we encountered here – lots of bringing you bottled water even if you ask for tap. Blergh. I hate paying for water but I guess it doesn’t hurt to sometimes give my body a break from all the fracking chemicals. Also, I tried a Basque specialty white wine called Txakoli. It was one of the only alcohols I’ve ever had that I didn’t despise. I don’t know whether it was the tiredness or the Spanish air or whether Busterri actually had the greatest house wine ever, but it was very nice.     
      The food isn’t very pretty, but hot damn it was yummy. This was my first of the ‘hot oily veggies’ meals, so I really enjoyed it. These sauteed mushrooms were possibly the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten! No joke! Even better than at the fancy pants Michelin restaurant this whole trip was based around (separate post on that wondrousness tomorrow). 
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Mushrooms swimming in oil from Busterri
    Seriously delicious, these mushrooms. They were positively swimming in salty olive oil and were just perfect. I could have returned to Busterri and had these a few more times. My next course was similarly oily, similarly warm and comforting, but featuring some fry!
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More hot oily veg mashups
    Although nothing could top those hot oily mushrooms, the next plate of hot vegetables was still quite delicious. Along with more mushrooms, carrots, peas, green beans? potatoes? what’s in there?, came unbelievably perfect fried cauliflower AND fried artichokes. The fried artichokes definitely would convert anyone who ever said they didn’t like fried food, not that those people exist. They melted apart and were amazing. Nice mash of mush here I say! 
    The wait staff was really nice and helpful, and the food was good, if on the expensive side. Also, there was bread. Always bread. 
     The next day (a Saturday), we tried to hit up some HappyCow recs for lunch, but they were closed! Whaaat are these schedules?! We ended up at a cider hall (or sidreria) in the casco viejo (old town!) called Arriaga, which was full of big parties of Spanish families having their weekend meal together as well as an assumed stag do (bachelor party) full of superlatively wasted young men (of course seated at the table next to us). Being a sidreria, the set menu on offer was called a cider menu, meaning you got your meat, other meat, and cheese for dessert along with unlimited cider that you pour yourself from the enormous barrels in the walls. That was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures but I had a decent green salad (lettuce and onion only, naturally) that was quite enormous (I think I was supposed to share with Husband but I love lettuce) and a grilled vegetable plate with really good asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and more. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing to sneeze at. Also, when the risk of not finding any vegetables while traveling is so high, I’d take veggie overload any day. Oh and of course there was never-ending table bread. 
   In the picture above right, you can see how one is supposed to get cider from the wall barrel. It’s pretty cool! The buckets are perfectly placed to catch what you can’t, but even so the staff had to regularly mop the floors because of all the spillage and drippage. It was really fun! I even tried it a few times just for the collection fun. Above left, you can see a picture of the restaurant exterior. Why am I including this? Well do you notice the graffiti at the bottom? Like…what?!?! Strong statement, sir! 
   So Arriaga was a pretty nice restaurant, but again it was crazy expensive for the set menu and convinced us that Bilbao is just on the pricey side. Oh the best part was what came with dessert (fruit for me):
   A bowl of walnuts and a nutcracker!!!! Ahhh! My oh my, I had way too much fun with this. Have you ever actually cracked your own nuts? It is difficult! I failed a few times before getting the hang of it. It mostly took me 4 cracks to fully demolish one, but there were a few times I was able to open it right on the seam. So proud! But not as proud as when I full on pulled a “Pretty Woman” with the escargot and let a walnut slip right out of the cracker and across the restaurant. Ohhhmigod, sorry people. One also went under our neighboring table. It was amazing. Seriously, this was so entertaining. 
       One of the vegetarian-friendly places we couldn’t get into on Saturday we went back to on Sunday, and it was kind of disappointing. It’s probably my own fault for ordering the wrong thing, though. The super hip, super popular restaurant in the casco viejo called Kasko is a restaurant recommendation in several mainstream guides. We had to make a reservation because it’s always really busy. Everything I read said they were vegan friendly, but several staff members had to come talk to me to figure out what I was after. Finally someone came over and told me, in Spanish, what their 4-5 vegan options were and that I was to pick two. I didn’t really understand most of what was said or that the first two weren’t necessarily appetizers and the second two weren’t necessarily entrees and that I could pick any two, so I kind of failed. I did pick a fantastic first course, the stuffed peppers with corn, beans, lettuce, and pine nuts in a wonderful red sauce that felt like a true Italian gravy. 
But my second course was a shambles. The lady had said something like green salad, asparagus, or pasta for the other options and I stupidly thought well, I’ve had a lot of green salad, and I’ve had a lot of asparagus, so why not pasta. Why not pasta? Because this isn’t Italy or a vegan restaurant so you aren’t going to be happy because: 
     Right, because it was just pasta. In oil. With no salt. (I got some from the bar but yeesh.) It was first brought to me covered in parmesan, and when I told the waitress who knew I was vegan she looked horrified and brought me a different plate. But still, that made me question whether these were egg noodles. And still, I’m not a fan of just a bowl of tasteless noodle. I chose POORLY, MAN. 
     My dessert was pretty hilarious. 
     Yes, sirree, that is a hunk of pineapple, uncut. I can’t really complain because it was good pineapple. I just find it kind of funny. I also do find it kind of sad. 
     So, if you are heading to Bilbao and you aren’t going to be eating the many, many hunks of meat served all over the city (it’s pretty jarring and gross), be prepared for a lot of grilled oily veggies. Try to figure out what the heck kind of schedule the (supposedly existing) vegan pintxos places have. Prepare some Spanish in advance, but if you get tripped up, don’t get so nervous that you rush into bad decisions like I did. Just take a deep breath and remember, no, I will probably not be happy with a big bowl of noodle to go alongside my table bread. Relax and be grateful that there are so many vegetables, even if they aren’t served in super interesting ways. And, most importantly, if you can swing it, plan a meal at Asador Extebarri, the fancypants restaurant that will be the subject of tomorrow’s Very Important Post. 
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