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    Home » Restaurant

    Amelia San Sebastian - French food with a bit of Star Wars

    Published: Sep 19, 2019 by Jennifer Che

    Amelia San Sebastian
    Amelia San Sebastian

    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.

    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    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 San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    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 . . .

    Amelia San Sebastian

    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.

    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    In general, the meal felt French in style yet made with Spanish ingredients. Aside from the first few courses, the overall meal skewed on the heavy side, with liver pate, roasted bone barrow, chicken, and lamb comprising a portion of the courses.

    Amelia San Sebastian

    My favorite course was Txipirones en su tinta, this fantastic squid ink filled soup ravioli. The texture of the exterior was a perfect, chewy al dente, and I loved how the inside liquid “popped”, sort of like an umami-filled Chinese soup dumpling, but Italian!

    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    I also loved the sourdough and the delicious (Mario-shaped) butter, which turned out to be my downfall because I ate so much of it that I was pretty full halfway through the meal.

    Amelia San Sebastian

    The most interesting dish was the "Barcelo" imperial rum ice cream, Oscietra caviar, and avocado mousse. The server told us to try each element separately first, and then mix them all together. Although each element was delicious, the combination worked surprisingly. We were all delightfully surprised how the sweet and slightly bitter rum, creamy avocado, and salty caviar came together so well.

    Amelia San Sebastian

    Although I was so, so stuffed (remember, we had lunch at Mugaritz that day), I still coudn’t help but finish the lemon tart even though I meant to just “have a taste.” I loved its delicate crispy shell and intense, bright lemon flavor. 

    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    All in all, we enjoyed our meal at Amelia. I regret not being hungrier. It was so hard to have to leave behind some portions of several courses because I was just so full already.

    • Amelia San Sebastian
    • Amelia San Sebastian

    However, we were glad to have had the opportunity to try Chef Airaudo’s creative work. 

    Amelia San Sebastian

    It’s an amazing dream to be able to find a city you love, open up a restaurant, achieve a Michelin Star in such a short amount of time, and continue to bring happiness to so many new diners on an international stage. 

    Congratulations Chef! May the force be with you here in San Sebastian!

    Amelia San Sebastian
    Calle Prim, 34
    2006 San Sebastian
    Spain

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    1. Amelia Hong Kong - Tiny Urban Kitchen says:
      December 1, 2020 at 11:02 am

      […] visited Amelia San Sebastian in 2019 during our weeklong trip to San Sebastian in mid-2019. Chef-owner Paulo Airaudo was born […]

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    Jennifer Che Tiny Urban Kitchen
    Jennifer Che Tiny Urban Kitchen

    Hi, my name's Jen and welcome to my cooking, eating, and travel site! I am an expat who moved from Boston to Hong Kong 5 years ago. Born and raised in Ohio to Taiwanese immigrant parents, I am a chemistry nerd, patent attorney by day, blogger by night, church musician on weekends, and food enthusiast always. Feel free to explore away, maybe starting with the Recipe Index or one of the travel pages! I hope you enjoy this site!

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