Arenales : San Sebastián, Spain
When new places open in San Sebastián, you can never be sure how long they’ll last. Often times, a new place’s longevity has surprisingly little to do with the quality of the food, the atmosphere, or the overall experience. If you get the combination of location and offering wrong, it can torpedo even the greatest of businesses. Or if you don’t have deep enough pockets to get you through rainy winter months in that first or second year. Or even if you don’t have that mystery X Donosti factor, which I am still struggling to pin down.
Arenales is an example, however, how something new can open and, without a ton of fanfare, remain open for years. Run by Cynthia and Santi, they opened shop in March of 2018 in their tiny local on the Boulevard. The food is sort of “generic modern”, which can sound less than thrilling, but the food actually does thrill.
I mean that in a delicious way, a collection of world trends and techniques carried out with professionalism, utilizing the best of the local produce in ways that aren’t typical here (think local cheese cream drizzled over roasted carrots and sprinkled with torn mint).
The concept is sharing plates, another idea that is hit or miss in San Sebastián, despite the fact that, as a concept, it looks quite a bit like pintxos and raciones. Confusing! But the best way to eat at Arenales is to go with a few friends and order the entire menu.
It is a parade of pure deliciousness, from the cecina drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with almonds and mozzarella to the blood sausage brioche, served with cool crispy hearts of romaine. The vision, which Santi carries out from the kitchen, has remained fairly constant.
What has evolved is the devotion to natural wine. At the start, there were some natural wines, but as the restaurant has evolved, the couple’s fascination with the world of sulfite-free and organic wines has turned into a list of over 14 pages of wine, with only three bottles of conventional wines. That makes Arenales the best place to go for natural wine in the city. Their offering includes rare bottles, hard to come by and often sold straight to the restaurant from the winery itself. Cynthia said that sometimes when they post certain wines on instagram, they get messages from faraway countries asking if they ship—that is how hard to come by and in demand some of these wines are.
Arenales is a lovely place, worthy of a stop by all Donostiarras and for anyone who wants something different in their pintxo-filled vacation, such as a table to sit at and some sulfite-free wine.
Arenales
El Boulevard, 11
San Sebastian, Spain 20003
+34 943 43 59 53
Ps. Here is an article I wrote about it in Spanish on Gastronosfera.