San Sebastián, Spain, Where A-List Celebrities Flock

For a city whose population is roughly the size of Fort Lauderdale, San Sebastián, not far from the French border in northern Spain’s Basque Country, has some illustrious fans. 

Matt Damon and Chris Hemsworth have become regular visitors while A-listers from Julia Roberts to Tom Hiddleston and the Rolling Stones have been spotted at the city’s majestic Maria Cristina hotel. 

You don’t need to be a sleuth to work out why. With its Parisian-style Belle Époque architecture, sandy horseshoe bays, and elegant seafront promenades, the city is one of the most beautiful in Europe, if not the world.

The late Anthony Bourdain believed there was “no better place to eat in Europe.” With a total of 18 Michelin stars within a ten-minute drive of each other, San Sebastián has a higher concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants than Manhattan. 

Similarly renowned are the city’s bars serving pintxos (the Basque equivalent of tapas), where chefs vie with one another to make the most innovative culinary creations in miniature, particularly in the warren of cobbled streets within the historic Old Town.

Until recently, visitors from the U.S. had to change flights in Madrid to reach the city. Yet as of June 1, a new direct United flight flies from Newark, N.J. to the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, just an hour’s drive west of San Sebastián. 

The city’s attraction for the world’s glitterati is nothing new. Originally a summer vacation spot for Spanish royals and aristocrats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, San Sebastián was a particular favorite of Spain’s Queen Regent Maria Cristina for whom the eponymous hotel was named when it opened in 1912.

The lavish building, sitting yards from the Urumea River and the Bay of Biscay, was designed by Charles Mewes, the French architect responsible for the Ritz hotels in Paris and Madrid. It has long been a celebrity hot spot—not least during the city’s annual film and jazz festivals (the latter opens this weekend, running July 19–27).

Indeed the hotel’s longstanding bartender Adolfo ‘Fito’ Zubizarreta tells me how Jessica Chastain is “muy simpatica” and enjoys grapefruit margaritas, how Oliver Stone likes his martinis extra dry, and that Antonio Banderas is a big fan of the local txakoli sparkling white wine.

“Americans love to come here,” says Rafael Gonzalez Ensesa, the Maria Cristina’s manager, in faultless English he perfected at a British boarding school. “They enjoy feeling pampered and they like the way we blend old and new within the same city. They also like our work-life balance, the fact that we take time to enjoy life.”

There’s also world-class art, both within the city itself and just beyond: Major works by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida sit on San Sebastián’s seafront and within a landscaped sculpture park, while the giant titanium swirls of Frank Gehry’s landmark 1997 Guggenheim Museum are easily accessible in nearby Bilbao. You’ll find medieval cathedrals, Baroque churches, and Renaissance palaces as well as vineyards all within an hour’s drive of the city—not to mention golf courses, surf breaks, and fishing villages lined with brightly colored wooden houses. 

The food, though, is arguably the top draw. Curious to see where San Sebastián’s gastronomic revolution had begun, I headed to Arzak, the first restaurant in Spain to earn three Michelin stars. 

Chef Juan Arzak, who cooked for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II during one of her State visits to Spain, helped pioneer the style of cooking now known as the “New Basque Cuisine,” reinventing traditional local dishes after being inspired by nearby France’s nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s. 

Now 83, Arzak runs the restaurant, which is set in a 19th-century Basque mansion high on a hill above the city center, with his daughter Elena, herself named the World’s Best Female Chef in 2012 by the 50 Best Restaurants List.

In an elegant, slate-walled dining room, my superb ten-course tasting menu included tender, locally caught lobster that arrived with the lobster tail standing tall like the sail of a yacht alongside soft cubes of forest-green borage. It tasted as good as it looked. 

Exceptional wine pairings included a subtle, crisp chardonnay (a 2019 Domaine de la Bongran Jean Thevenet Viré-Clessé) with the gentlest hint of honeyish sweetness that sang of a summer’s day by the sea. 

Arzak’s partner in crime in creating New Basque Cuisine was fellow chef Pedro Subijana. His similarly three Michelin-starred Akelarre, where Damon and Hemsworth have also been spotted, is likewise an essential spot on the city’s culinary map.

Meanwhile, newcomers seem to appear on every other corner. Case in point: The recently one-Michelin-starred Ibai by Paulo Airaudo, set in an unpretentious traditional dining room with exposed ceiling beams, wowed me with its kokotxas (a kind of hake cheeks) five ways: two grilled, one confit, and two battered.

Some might argue, however, that to sample Basque cuisine at its best, you need to head to the legendary pintxos bars of the Old Town.

Amid colonnaded plazas where the bells of Gothic and Baroque churches chime on the hour, my first lunchtime stop was at Bar Txepetxa, which first opened in 1925 and whose walls are lined with photos of stars such as Ian McKellen and Glenn Close. Locals and tourists alike jostle for a seat at the traditional hightop wooden bar to savor Txepetxa’s renowned anchovy pintxos, a sliver of delicately salty anchovy layered with smoked salmon on a small toasted roll.

Nearby Muxumartín was a more contemporary affair, serving up designer pintxos like its prize-winning, punchy but elegant chicken with ginger and mayonnaise, while a soft samba soundtrack played in the background.

As the warm afternoon sun descended on the city, I joined strolling couples, families, and joggers on the 19th-century seafront promenade with its neatly manicured floral displays, as Ecuadorians in ponchos played pan pipes. My final stop was the terrace of San Sebastián’s Nobu Hotel, which opened in 2023 in a Belle Époque villa facing the sea. 

Home to both a bar and a predictably superb restaurant, which combines Nobu’s usual Japanese dishes and flavors with local Basque influences, the hotel is a regular venue for film festival events. It’s easy to imagine stars like Cate Blanchett up here, perhaps a glass of local txakoli wine in hand, and see what brings San Sebastián’s fans, illustrious and otherwise, back to the city, again and again.