A day and night in Bilbao

Where to drink and eat

If you ask me, the best thing about Bilbao isn’t its food scene (seriously). It’s not the Guggenheim. It’s not the old town.

It’s that you cannot move in any direction without seeing the green hills that surround the city. North, south, east and west, Bilbao has them, looming over its wide boulevards and bridges. A reminder that you are in the Basque Country. Green Spain. A place far removed from the collective stereotypes of Spain.

This is the land of rain and cool temperatures and green hills and pastures.

I’ve long loved Bilbao. For a start, its airport is the gateway to my old home of Logroño in La Rioja, which means I’ve spent many an afternoon, night or weekend roaming its streets before jumping on a plane or heading back to the Logroñese motherland.

But to dismiss it as a convenient transit spot would be remiss. This city is more than that — if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t actively choose to spend a few days there every year.

If you know anything about Bilbao, you probably know it’s a bit of a foodie spot these days. TikTok is filled with bright young things chowing down on the city’s pintxos — small bites of food served on bread — that have made Bilbao so famous.

Pintxo culture is exactly how I love to eat. It’s why my guide to Logroño — another pintxo-heavy city — features almost exclusively pintxo bars and very few restaurants.

When It Comes to Tapas, Logroño > San Sebastian

This guide to Bilbao will be no exception, largely because, despite visiting the city maybe 10 times, I have only ever eaten in a restaurant here once. Bonus recommendation: it was called Kimtxu, an Asian-Basque fusion restaurant. It was very good and I hear, is quite the place to be nowadays.

But generally, I’ll exclusively eat pintxos in this town. The bars are too much of a vibe to ever leave.

I returned to Bilbao this week, so I thought it was time to write a travel guide to the city. As always, I only write guides if I feel I am adding something different to the conversation. Sure, I could tell you to visit famous Bilbao institutions like Gure Toki or Victor Montes but you could find them simply by Googling “best pintxo bars in Bilbao.”

Instead, this is my personal “little black book” of pintxo bars. It’s not huge — enough to fill 24-48 hours — but these are the places I return to time again. They are my go-tos.

The first recommendation is free for everyone to read, the rest are for my wonderful cohort of paid subscribers. As a reminder, The Sauce is 100% supported by its community of paying subscribers. No adverts, sponsored content, or affiliate links. Only me dissecting food and drink culture one essay at a time.

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Bilbao isn’t like Logroño, where all the bars are packed into a 5-minute walk. This is a bigger city. With that in mind, I’ve ordered my recommendations in a pintxo-crawl-friendly way, starting in the old town, crossing the bridge into the Abando neighbourhood and ending up in Indautxu. It’s around a 30-minute walk between the first and last stop.

As always, I’ve included a link at the end of this guide to a map of all my pintxo bar recommendations, as well as some extra coffee shop and craft beer bar recommendations.

Taberna Basaras

My love for anchovies knows few bounds which is good in Taberna Basaras, because that is their speciality. This is a tiny, old-school bar in Bilbao’s old town lined with wine bottles (the wine is very good here) and a counter filled with pintxos. It’s here you can try a trainera — narrow slices of bread topped with peppers and anchovies. Trainera pintxos are named after the traditional Basque boat whose shape it resembles: