The rules nobody tells you

The first pintxo bar is always slightly baffling if you are used to eating anywhere else. It is loud, there is no queue, the counter is covered in food, and everyone seems to know something you do not. So here it is, plainly. Walk in. Do not wait to be seated, because you will not be. Catch the bar staff’s eye – they are watching, even when it looks like they are not. Order one thing and one drink. Eat standing. Tell them what you had and pay on the way out. Then leave, even though you are enjoying it, and go to the next place.

Four or five bars is an evening. Two hours, maybe three. It costs a fraction of what a dinner would and you will remember it far longer.

Order the thing on the board, not the thing on the counter

This is the single most useful piece of advice I can give you here. The pintxos laid out along the bar are the display – some are excellent and some have been sitting there a while. The chalkboard above the bar lists what the kitchen is cooking to order, and that is almost always where the good stuff is. Point at the board. If you cannot read it, ask what they are proud of tonight, which is a question every bar in this city loves being asked.

Drink what they drink

Txakoli, the faintly sparkling local white, poured from a great height into a flat tumbler to wake it up. Or a zurito, a small beer, which exists precisely so you can have one in every bar without the evening ending early. A small glass in each place is the whole technique.

When to go, and the thing about eight thirty

Nothing is really happening before eight thirty and the good hour is nine to eleven. If you arrive at seven you will find half-empty rooms and think the city has been oversold. It has not; you are simply early. Go at eight for a quiet start in the first bar, and let it build.

How I set this up for clients

A private guide for one evening, who knows which kitchen is on form this week rather than which bar was famous five years ago, and who can get you served in the crush. One evening of that and you can do the rest of the trip entirely by yourself, confidently, which is the point. Big commercial pintxo tours are now capped at 10 people with no megaphones, which has improved things considerably, but a group of 10 still cannot get near a counter.

Inquire about a private Basque Country trip

Pair it with

The full planning brief: The Rolodex: San Sebastián. Before you go: The Primer: San Sebastián. Three days, arranged: The Route: Three Days in San Sebastián.