The first one I went to is called Zelaia and is in a town called Hernani which is close to San Sebastian and is listed as the best Cider House in, The Basque Country, by the Guardian.
I was lucky enough to be invited by one of the teachers to go with her, her husband, and her brother and sister in law. I'd heard about these places and felt very lucky to have to opportunity to go and then to find out that it's the best was the icing on the cake. What a neat experience it was and the food was just oh so deeeeelicious!!
My dinner companions, the teacher, Jaione, is on the left.
Traditionally - there is no seating in a cider house, everyone stands up at high
tables.
- there are no individual plates to eat off of, bread and serviettes
suffice.
- txotx (pronounced chotch) is the call when a new barrel has
been opened and then everyone goes into the cider room
- the menu is cod omelette, cod with peppers, rare steak,
chunks of quince jelly with walnuts and the local
Idiazabel cheese along with almond biscuits called
tejas and cigarillas.
and the rules for cider are that you serve yourself, as often as you want but only a small amount at a time and the trick is to hold your glass so that the cider hits the side of the glass and is therefore aerated and becomes a little fizzy and then it's 'down the hatch' like drinking a 'shot'. Everyone who wants cider kind of stands behind one another and the cider spouts out of the barrel and you have to get your glass into place to catch it in your glass when the person in front has what they want and moves away. My first time I really had no idea and got the cider into my glass ok and was waiting for the guy to turn the cider off completely unaware that there was someone behind me waiting. The guy at the barrel in charge of things was yelling something at me which I coudn't understand and I was calling out STOP STOP, which he couldn't understand, and then I finally realised to just get out of the way. I was laughing but I'm not sure if the guy was. I got the hang of it soon enough.
The alcohol content is apparently only 5 - 6% so to get drunk takes quite a few trips to the barrels. However, Jose Antonio did tell me that he managed to get very drunk by going to the cider barrel with both his glass and Yolanda's glass. He put cider in his, drank it then put cider in hers and then more in his, drank it and then another for himself to take back to the table. So if you want to get drunk on cider that's the way to do it! Actually you don't have to move out of the cider room if you've eaten all your food and you can drink as much as you want, it is simply included in the price of your dinner, not charged by the glass.
Oh, that's right, the food just arrives at your table - you don't order anything except if you want more of something.
Most cider houses have an opening season and Zelaia opened in January and closes in April for the rest of the year.
At this cider house we stood up, ate the food using bread and serviettes, had the traditional menu plus had another traditional dish to begin with which was pieces of chorizo, about 2 centimeters long served hot in a dish of gravy stuff, and served with little individual loaves of delicious bread which we pulled open and put a piece of chorizo inside, kind of like a bbq sausage in bread. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of this dish because I was still getting my head around the fact that not only did I have to stand all night but also, that I didn't have a plate to eat off of. Actually, I was surprised to find, standing didn't bother me, I leaned on the table from time to time but everyone in the room was standing so I didn't actually think about the fact that I was standing. As for not having a plate, no problem - I just followed what the others did and got the hang of using bread and a fork. Yes, we did get a knife and fork each.
tucking into the cod omelette
cod with peppers with onion rings in the centre and pieces of chilli on top,of the peppers. O got to eat every piece of chilli yummy yummy
the steak - we had 2 pieces like this. I just have to tell you that the steak was AMAZING - juicy, tender, sealed on the outside and rare inside. yummmmmm yummmmmm, yummmmm
The place was full of people and the atmosphere was great - lots of people eating damned good food, drinking a very fine drink and simply having a food time. There were a lot of big groups of people and apparently bus loads of people come from over the French border.
The main eating room. There are 3 other rooms with the barrels which also have a few tables in them
catching cider
there is guttering running along the floor and before getting more cider you have to empty the dregs in your glass into the guttering.
some of the barrels - just over 15,000 litres in a barrel
The second cider house experience was in the weekend just gone with Jose Antonio and Yolanda. It wasn't quite like Zelaia, not so traditional - we sat down which was ok but still no plates, we had a meat omelette, which was very nice instead of a cod omelette, the steak was good, a little tough, not quite the same quality as in Zelaia. However, I'm not complaining - I had fun with good company, and the cider was good so overall another great experience with a bus ride to boot.
Jose Antonio concentrating on doing it right
In Añota, the cider house near Azpeitia
and that's it for now. I've been doing this in a bar and now it's time to o home and pack my bag because I'm going to London, will be back on Tuesday
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