Laia Erretegia is about 25 minutes by car from San Sebastián, in the Basque Country — ranked No. 3 on World’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants 2025, and holds 2 Suns in the Guía Repsol 2025.

The restaurant sits on a small hillside, run by a brother-and-sister team — the brother is an award-winning grill master from the SS Gastronomika barbecue competition, while the sister handles the wine relationships and built the cellar herself.

The building used to be a traditional Basque farmhouse. Green lawn rolls out past the windows, like the restaurant simply grew out of the hillside.

It has the kind of natural scenery you can’t fake, but the service, setting, and food are all sharp and precise too.

Cecina de bœuf Wagyu

Known for its steak, but the starters already hold their own.

Eating wagyu in Spain sounds like a bit of a tax on the gullible, but Laia’s wagyu ham is genuinely worth trying — Japanese A5 wagyu shipped to Spain and dry-aged in-house.

Sliced paper-thin and nearly translucent, the fat catching the light like gold. It really does have a texture to it — a thin sheet that dissolves on the tongue, layered in flavor but perfectly balanced.

Coquille Saint-Jacques grillée, écume d’huile d’olive

Tripes en sauce

The scallop comes grilled wrapped in seaweed, with an olive oil foam. Setting aside the excellent doneness and tenderness — the scallop’s own sweetness was off the charts, and it didn’t hide its freshness one bit.

I’d heard the seafood here was fresh, but I didn’t expect the ingredients’ natural strengths to be shown off this beautifully.

The tripe was also worth trying — you can order a half portion just to satisfy curiosity. Lightly seasoned, all about the freshness and softness of the tripe itself, tender to chew with plenty of flavor underneath.

Laia’s steak is defined mainly by the combination of aging and charcoal fire. The default Basque steak is a bone-in ribeye, Txuleta — we ordered the top grade, Côte de bœuf PREMIUM TOP, aged a minimum of 30 days, currently at 45 days.

This giant steak sells by the kilo at just €135/kg — plenty for two people without hesitation. The restaurant thoughtfully picks the smallest cut available, bone-in at around 1kg, enough to satisfy without being excessive.

The Maillard crust on the outside was genuinely wonderful — impossible to resist that intensely flavorful, crisp shell, and the smoky char wrapped around it like a cloud. The fat had been rendered out entirely, transformed into pure fat sweetness.

The doneness was restrained — still red when cut, firm to the bite, but the muscle fiber was already fine and tender. It’s not the kind of steak that wins you over on marbling alone; instead it’s dense and refined, holds up well over a long chew, concentrated in flavor, and still expresses itself well as it cools. Though for two people sharing one big cut, it did get a little repetitive by the end.

Of course, eating a big cut of red meat is its own satisfaction, and the most tender bone-adjacent meat is a pleasure not to skip — the restaurant will happily reheat and portion it for you, and served rosy-pink it reignites your appetite all over again. The golden fat edge next to it is a little sinful to eat, but that burst of sweetness and milky richness stays with you for a long time.

The side dish was as fresh as expected — this season it was roasted bell peppers, soft out of the oven, unapologetically sweet.

For dessert, we figured we’d already come this far, so we ordered the Flan out of curiosity. It looked a little thrown-together, but it turned out to be pretty much perfect.

Intensely milky, soft and fine enough that you want to eat it spoonful by spoonful — even after being eleven-tenths full from all that red meat, we finished the whole thing without noticing.

The restaurant’s cellar is genuinely excellent — a wide, well-priced selection. You could see nearly every table had a full bottle open, and that laid-back scene of sitting in the sun, eating meat, and drinking wine really maxed out the relaxed factor.

We picked a Dominio do Bibei Ribeira Sacra 2020, from almost the same region as the wagyu — a clean acidity, fine tannins, and a touch of spice that cut right through the sweetness and fat left in the mouth.

Reservations are still fairly easy to get right now — booking three days ahead almost always finds a table. On that front, it’s a lot easier than Elkano.

Looking back, I like it more and more the more I think about it. Next time, hopefully with more people, working through the whole menu.

Laia Erretegia

Arkolla Auzoa Auzoa, 33, 20280 Hondarribia, Gipuzkoa

(About 30 min by taxi from San Sebastián)

Thursday – Tuesday

Lunch 1:00 – 3:00

laiaerretegia.com