This is part 9 of the series on San Sebastian, Girona, and Barcelona, Spain. Other parts of this series (as they become available) can be found at this link.
Note to self – don’t book two long tasting meals in one day while in San Sebastian. You will regret it.
We had already had pintxos two nights in a row. Even though the pintxos in San Sebastian are excellent, the area where they are located is not large, and it’s easy to get a pretty good sense of pintxos after a couple days eating your way through them.
So, we took the risk of booking a newly minted hot new restaurant in San Sebastian, Amelia. Amelia’s chef-owner Chef Paulo Airaudo was born in Argentina to Italian immigrants and has worked in many well-known places such as Arzak, The Fat Duck, and Magnolia in Italy.
The cuisine at Amelia San Sebastian is international but focuses on seasonal and sustainable ingredients together with biodynamic wines. The restaurant mostly works with small, local producers for the food, even showing on a map (on the back of the menu) the various locations throughout Spain from which the raw ingredients originated. Though most ingredients come from Spain, a small handful of specialty ingredients come from other regions, such as Pecorino and EVOO from Italy and caviar from Denmark.
Amelia, named after Chef Airaudo’s daughter Amélie, has seating for 22 diners and only serves tasting menus. The small, cozy dining space is beautifully decorated with a modern, Scandinavian style. At the same time, Darth Vader, storm troopers, Mario, and other fun, playful themes appear all over the restaurant. It’s clear that Chef Airaudo is a kid at heart and is not afraid to showcase his favorite characters. In fact, they even appear in some of the dishes . . .
If I had to come up with one word to describe the food at Amelia, I would say “sauce.” Chef Airaudo loves making different sauces, and there was a sauce poured table-side in virtually every single one of the dishes.
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