MB Kursaal and The Spoon

Of all the places to find great food in San Sebastian, I thought I'd highlight two of my favourites.

There are several Michelin starred restaurants in San Sebastian, one of which is Restaurante Kursaal. The restaurant was unfortunately closed over the days that I was there, but there is a gastro-pub below the restaurant called MB Kursaal that serves great meals at more reasonable prices. As well as the a la carte menu, they offer a degustation menu which includes five courses, a cava cocktail, bread and wine.

As a snack, they serve some small olives which in contrast to their size have a very strong briney flavour.

The cava cocktail was served to start the meal.

Cava is a sparkling white wine and this was combined with fruit juice and was refreshing and perfect on a hot sunny day at the beach.

The appetiser was a Goat's Cheese and Prawn Salad.


The greens here are spinach leaves and the jelly cubes are a muscatel reduction. The green streak across the plate is chlorophyll. The goats cheese is creamy and salty, the spinach fresh and the muscatel jelly sweet and refreshing. The salty and sweet elements play against each other very well, but I think the salad itself may have been over-salted as the balance is not quite right and the overall taste seems to be too salty. Also, I don't think a single prawn is enough here.

The first main course is Creamy Seafood Rice with a Garlic Cream Foam.

Inside the rice are octopus slices and mussels. The Garlic Cream Foam is served in a separate dish as it disolves into the rice shortly after you pour it over due to the heat. The rice is indeed smooth, creamy and well cooked. The seafood is fresh and delicious, but once again a little lacking in quantity. The extra punch of garlic from the foam really gives this dish another dimension without overpowering the other flavours.

Fish of The Day is up next.

On the menu it says this is "served with a rich seafood jus, on a bed of crushed potatoes". Unfrotunately, this dish lacked a lot of flavour. The fish was cooked fine, but had a very mild taste and the "rich" jus was very bland and only served to water down the potatoes which already seemed quite mushy. A very disappointing dish.

The two desserts are served together and they are French Toast and a traditional Sheep's milk dessert.

The French Toast is made with egg yolks and fresh cream and served with a frozen cream and was delicate while being rich. The Sheep's Milk was topped with sugar and bruleed and served with a shot glass of ice-cold apple juice. These were both delicious desserts but the French Toast was my favourite.

This was a good meal, although a little hit and miss in some areas. For the price, it was good value and a very enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours at the beach on a sunny day in San Sebastian.

The other place that is definitely worth a mention is La Cuchara de San Telmo (The Spoon of Saint Telmo). They are doing pintxos of a high standard and cooked to order.

The first thing that I ordered was the Foie Gras.

This came served grilled slightly, with a dark sauce and on an apple puree with streaks of another green sauce. This melts in the mouth and is delicious and decadent.

After this I was looking at the chalkboard and seeing if I could recognise any of the dishes there or at least individual words which would give me an idea what the dish was talking about. I chose the Moleja a Terniera Asada con "Tximi-Txurri". The words I understood there were "Asada" which means grilled and "Tximi-Txurri" (pronounced Chimmi-Churri" is a sauce I know from many South American dishes that is made of vinegar, garlic and parsley and goes great with grilled meats. This is what this dish looks like.

This was served on an apple puree, just like the Foie...a coincidence, surely that I would pick the only two dishes on the menu with the same accompaniment. This was grilled delisiousness, but I know it was something offaly good from the texture, which was smooth and didn't have the fibrous meat of a steak or other muscle. I asked the waiter to translate it for me and it turns out that this is veal sweetbread. I definitely liked this and will look for it on menus when I get back to Melbourne for sure.

I figured I had been adventurous enough and handed over control of the next couple of pintxos to the bartender (who was also serving me a refreshing beer called Keller 18 I think). His first suggestion was a bacon-wrapped scallop.

This, strangely enough was served on an apple puree with streaks of green sauce. I'm noticing a pattern here. The scallop was perfectly cooked and the bacon was excellent as it should be in a country that celebrates the pig as much as Spain does. Another great dish, but I'm starting to get a little bored of apple puree.

The next suggestion was the veal cheek.

Now this is something I know and love, cheeks are a wonderfully tender meat in any animal, always a favourite of mine. In this case, the meat was so tender it fell apart as soon as my fork touched it, there was no need for a knife at all. This time, as I'm sure you've noticed, there is no apple puree, instead it's a potato puree. Absolutely stunning dish and one I did come back for a couple of days later.

The last suggestion of the bartender's was a grilled cheese. Not a sandwich, just a piece of cheese on the grill.

This is a soft cheese and as it grills it leaves a puddle of darker, more grilled cheese on the bottom. That is what you can see on the top, a disc of dark, caramelised cheese which has an amazing, intense flavour. Unfortunately, as you have so astutely spotted, this also brought the reappearance of the apple puree and green sauce.

That was the end of my first dinner here, but not my last as I came back again, trying to find some more sensational freshly cooked delights from the Spoon.

As I headed back to La Cuchara a couple of days later, there were a couple of dishes I wanted to try which I didn't get a chance to eat on my previous visit. The first of these is a dish featuring an ingredient you will see all over San Sebastian and is quite popular all over Spain. That is Pulpo, or Octopus.

Cooked "a la plantxa" (on the plank) this is baked on wood until tender and pretty much falling apart, this dish has a dense texture without being chewy, a very good example of this ingredient.

The second dish I wanted to try was the Magret de Pato.

This is a perfectly cooked piece of duck breast, but specifically from a duck that has produced foie gras. This is served on a slice of dried apricot which has been rehydrated. These flavours go very well together and the rich, slightly fatty duck is balanced by the sweetness of the apricot.

Spotting a word on the board I don't understand, I dive right in and order the Orejo Iberico Asada y Prensada. The words that I like here are Iberico - the famous pork that produces the best jamon - and asado (grilled). Must be some delicious grilled pork....

Looking at this, I knew it wasn't a cut of pork that is normally served as it clearly has some cartilage that is quite obvious. Quite willing to give anything a go as usual, I cut into this and the taste was smooth and porky, with a crunch from the cartilage and the skin. The translation for the name of this dish is "Ear of Iberian Pork, Grilled and Pressed". I love pigs ears and when they are roasted on a suckling pig are crunchy and delicious, in this case, this is obviously from an older pig and has quite a bit of soft delicate meat on it.

My last dish from La Cuchara was something I had been watching people order constantly on both my visits and that was the Risotto Cremoso de Queso de Cabra.


This is not really a risotto, since it is made with risoni, a rice-shaped pasta. Queso de Cabra is Goat's Cheese and this is a creamy, rich dish which has the slight tang which I love from goat's cheese. Only a few spoonfuls, but absolutely packed with flavour and creamy deliciousness.

I had a wonderful time in San Sebastian, next stop Madrid.