My wife and I spend a part of the year in her native town, Biarritz, in the French Basque country and so it’s logical that we often go to San Sebastian only 35 km away in Spain for a great ‘pintxos’ lunch. San Sebastian is home to the freshest and best seafood in Spain, with no fewer than seventeen Michelin-star restaurants. The town is particularly famous for pintxos, the Basque equivalent of tapas and a local speciality. After I highlighted Ganbara, one of the best pintxos bars in the Parte Vieja neighbourhood, in the last issue, we decided to go back for a taste of the best of the best again. Unfortunately when we arrived Ganbara was closed and two older gentlemen came up to us and suggested we should follow them because they were also going for lunch, and they would take us to a place which was at least as good. They took us to Casa Urola, which was only two streets away. We sat outside and I introduced myself to the owner and head chef Pablo Loureiro. Soon we were chatting about food and he told us about his philosophy and cooking technique. Pablo started out at the famous ‘Rodil’ restaurant in Donostia-San Sebastian, founded by his grandfather and later run by his parents, where he was steeped in traditional Basque cuisine. By mid-2012, his burning desire to run his own restaurant and develop his vision of Basque traditional cuisine drove him to embark on his own professional project with his wife Begoña Arenas. He cooks on a charcoal grill, which is a difficult thing to use in the kitchen because, as he told us, it is like ‘a double-edged sword’, meaning that if you use good quality products, it intensifies tastes such as umami, making the dish stand out from the rest with a great texture and flavour, but if you have mediocre products, it emphasises the bad flavour. Which is why he sometimes orders fish and meat twice a day! We started with some refined and excellent pintxos and soon after Pablo introduced us to a range of signature dishes like Oysters in Iberian bacon, cream of cauliflower, broth of sea crab and lemon zest oil followed by Sautéed baby broad beans with borage and artichokes and egg on a bed of potato cream. Sensational! House- salted anchovies and white tuna ‘ventreska’ with grilled red peppers. Classic and perfect! The hake loin with cheeks and clams was my absolute favourite— I have never experienced such a soft, delicious and extremely tasty dish! And so on and so on.... And to finish a wonderful ‘pain perdu’. No wonder Casa Urola is called the ‘Hidden gem of Donostia’ and was awarded the Euskadi Gastronomy Prize for the Best Restaurateur by the Basque Gastronomy Academy in 2019. What a delight! Bravo Pablo and his team!! We will definitely come back.