San Sebastian
Crossing the Spanish frontier on the western side from France, the first important town reached is San Sebastian. The great sea-bathing place of Spain is a town where one would expect to find some excellent restaurants, for the Queen-mother lives for a great part of the year in her palace on the sea-shore, and the Court is with the King whenever he is in residence there, which is generally in summer and autumn. A large hotel, with a good restaurant and all the latest improvements, is projected, and no doubt San Sebastian will soon be as well catered for as any French watering-place; but in the meantime it is as well for the casual seeker for a meal to go to the Continental, which overlooks the bay, and where a very fair breakfast is to be obtained for 4 francs in the verandah whence all the life of the place can be watched.
The Casino has a restaurant with a wide verandah which should be a delightful place at which to take dinner. I had been warned that I should not be well served there, but one day I thought that the view of the town and the garden, with its picturesque crowd, would make amends for any dilatoriness. This was the menu of the dinner that I partook of, and, though wine was included in the repast, to conciliate the haughty Spaniard in dress-clothes who came and looked at me as though I were an "earth-man," I ordered a pint of Diamante:—
Hors-d'œuvre.
Potages.
Crème de volaille. Consommé Riche.
Poisson.
Langouste. Sauce Tartare.
Entrée.
Salmis de Perdreaux au Jerez.
Légumes.
Tomates farcies Provençale.
Rôti.
Filet de Bœuf Piqué Broche. Salade.
Entremets.
Arlequin. Dessert.
I do not think that I ever had a worse-served 7 francs worth of food. Once in my life, at a Chicago hotel, I saw a negro waiter shaking up the bottle of Burgundy I had ordered, just to amuse his brother "coons," and I felt a helpless exasperation as I watched him. The same feeling of voiceless anger was upon me as I watched the gentleman who was supposed at the San Sebastian Casino to keep me supplied with hot food, bring a dish from the interior of the café and then put it down on somebody else's table to cool while he strolled across the terrace to ask the military guardian at the gate how many people had paid for admission, or at what hour the band played, or what number had won the lottery.
Bourdette and the Urbana, both with French cookery, are the restaurants patronised by the Englishmen in San Sebastian who talk Spanish, and both are said to be fairly good.
Bilbao
It is curious that at the great northern town of Spain there should be no first-class restaurants. The two best in the town are the Antiguo, in the Calle de Bidebarrieta, and the Moderno. Both of these boast what the Spaniards term Cocina Francesa, which only means that if you make a request, as the English always do, the cook will fry your food with butter instead of oil.
At Portugalete, the port of Bilbao, there is a restaurant, good, as Spanish restaurants go, attached to the hotel of the place, the proprietor of which is Dn. Manuel Calvo. The cook and the staff of waiters come from Lhardy's, the best restaurant in Madrid, and spend their summer by the seaside. The prices at this restaurant are high. Portugalete is only a summer resort.