Fantastic couple of days filming ‘My France with Manu’ in Basque Country!!
Manu Feildel and his Channel 7 TV filming crew from Australia were here in the Basque Country last week filming for an episode in the latest ‘My France with Manu’ series, and Basque Experiences have been organising and ‘fixing’ in Getxo and for the later shoot in Donostia / San Sebastian.
A warm Friday afternoon in the delightful Donostia/San Sebastían saw us pounding the streets of the old town, full team in tow, recording various parts of the latest show. Manu was obviously popular judging by the amount of fans, female ones in particular surprisingly enough, who wanted their photo taken with him.
Donostia/San Sebastían is world-famous for its cuisine.
Not only the many starred Michelin restaurants that can be found all over town, but the Pintxos… Bite-sized bar food that forms such an essential part of Basque Culture. The hundreds of different bars present these morsels as a way to accompany a glass of either txakoli, rioja, cider or beer, and some take chefs and owners take the preparation and presentation very seriously indeed!! There are competitions for this type of thing all over the Basque Country!
Donostia (San Sebastían)
First stop was with chef Eloy in Restaurante Gandarias Calle 31 Agosto, a classic in San Sebastian in terms of pintxos. Under his watchful eye and guidance, he showed Manu how to clean and fillet the fresh anchovies, and how to prepare a them for conserving, both in salt and in cider vinegar. We then proceeded to learn how to make a ‘Gilda’ a pintxo named in honour of Rita Hayworth, a famous mid-twentieth century American actress, who is immortalised in the Green, Spicy and Hot ingredients that make up the Gilda!
Restaurante Gandarias
From here we moved a hundred yards down the road (there are so many bars here in Donostia…) to the super Bar La Cepa and the wonderful owner Aitziber. Here the idea was to sample the pintxos with Manu so he could begin to get a feel for the bar culture here, which to be honest is impossible not to love!
Bar La Cepa
Aitziber allowed us to film at the bar which was extremely generous of her, especially with a hungry and thirsty film crew… All in all a great day’s fun in what is the best place in the world for bar food in our opinion, and am sure the crew agreed!