La Cuchara de San Telmo

Intro
La Cuchara de San Telmo - Highly Recommended
Plaza Valle Lersundi (off of 31 de Agosto)
San Sebastian, Spain

Let's cut to the chase. This is by far my favorite restaurant of all time. I've been to some great restaurants in the past - Le Bernardin, Daniel, Jean Georges, French Laundry plus numerous Michelin starred restaurants in Italy and France. But, this place just does it for me. We're not talking about white table cloths and dudes/dudettes in tuxedos serving you, this place is a bar that serves up spectacular flavors and textures. Everyone is so chill there too and just having a good time eating and drinking - kinda like going to a sporting event. La cuchara reminded me of a combo between Au Pied de Cochon and Ko - huge flavors in a relaxed environment. Overall I give the restaurant a 96/100.

Our Menu (my best guess of what we ordered - apologies since the menu was a tad blurry and I don't know the Basque language Euskara)
1) Foie Gras (foie salteado con compota de manzana) **
2) Duck Breast (magret asado con manzana) **
3) Beef Cheek (carrillera de ternera al vino tinto) ***
4) Melted Cheese (queso de cabra a la plantxa relleno)**
5) Duck Confit (confit de pollo "luma gorri") *
6) Sweet Bread (molleja de ternera asada au "tximi-txurri") **
7) Scallop Bacon (vieira "ttoro" en vuelta en tocineta bellota) *
8) Pigs Ears (oreja de ciberico asada, prensada) ***
9) Pork Ribs (costilla de ciberico lacada de vinagre de modena) **
10) Chocolate Ganache (ganatxe de txokolate amargo naranja) **

Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way * Good ** Great *** What the F – in a good way

Dish Comments
1) The Spaniards love their foie gras and this place does it up right. Great flavor and crunchy from the salt and sear on the outside, but creamy and fun on the inside. Nice with the apple puree.
2) Magret duck made sense with the foie and this was cooked perfectly. Solid duck flavor and surprisingly tender.
3) A complete WTF moment here. Like my knees buckled and I had a hard time seeing after eating this. Uber tender beef cheek and the flavors were so intensely beefy - ridiculous stuff.
4) Kinda like a hunky of cheese that was torched up on the top kinda like a cheese creme brulee. A great fun dish and we 86'd it at around 9pm, so obviously a very popular dish.
5) Tasty duck confit. Not great, but still nice.
6) A great, great sweetbread. They got it so perfect over here. So crispy on the outside, but light and creamy on the inside - really perfect.
7) Solid bacon and scallop dish. Scallop was nicely cooked and slightly sweet, but kinda lost the scallop flavor with the bacon though.
8) Another ridiculous WTF moment. Fatty, meaty, and soft cartilage - a mix of great textures. Huge, huge pork flavors as well. So ridiculous...
9) Tender and meaty pork ribs. Pork flavor is decent, but seems to be drowned out a tad with the vinegar though.
10) Crazy ridiculous chocolate flavors lightened up with the oranges. So rich, chocolaty, and delicious.

Overall Restaurant Experience (96/100)

• Food 9.5/10 – I can't remember another time where there were so many great dishes sprinkled with some WTF dishes (Bar Boqueria not withstanding). The weird thing is everything was so rich and intense, but I don't know if it's the use of vinegar or the fact that the plates were small, but my palate was never weighed down and I wanted to eat more. Beautiful plates as well.
• Service 9.5/10 – You order from the bartenders and supposedly they're arses to non Spanish speakers. I didn't have a problem at all, but I did rock my terrible Spanish. Key phrase "que me recomienda" - what do you recommend. Also, the Berlitz phrasebook helped a ton with menu items. Any who, our bartender was extremely helpful laughing at how much I almost blew my load eating the food. And watching the cooks is pretty cool as well. Not sure, how they do it - just 3 dudes back there (one on la plancha, one on the boilers, and one on plating) and everything was out of control good.
  
• Atmosphere 9.8/10 – Again, this is way more type of environment. Everyone is so chill there having a great time laughing and enjoying the sick food. Very tiny bar with no seats, but you basically eat at the bar or the tiny shelf space behind the bar. Also, as mentioned you get to see into the tiny ass kitchen - no bigger than a tiny bathroom. Got there at 8pm (early for Spaniards) and it was moderately busy - like 15 people. Went back after the real dinner at 9:45 and the place was crazy packed - like 30-40 people. Crowd consisted of groups of fellas and lasses as well as a bunch of couples. Majority were Spanish, but we met some Americans and I heard some German in there as well.
  
• Price 10.0/10 – Each plate is about 3 euro and is a good 3-5 bites. The sidra and tintos are about 1 euro also. All together this probably cost 40 euros. By far the best deal on the planet...
  

Closing Comments
This place was so good we went back after eating at another full sit down restaurant...and proceeded to order 7 more dishes. I wish I found this place earlier cause I would've seriously gone back everyday.