Flight of Fancy podcast: Basque Country is the world's best destination for people who love to eat

You're doing pintxos all wrong.

You've probably heard, by now, about the Basque style of tapas served in the far north of Spain. You know about these small bites, these delectable snacks that you devour as part of a moveable feast, as you roam from bar to bar washing each pintxo down with cheap drinks.

Except, that's not the way you're supposed to do it. Or at least that's not how the locals do it in places like San Sebastian and Bilbao. Basque pintxos aren't supposed to be consumed on night-long crawls, but in small quantities before sitting down to a main meal.

"Pintxos for locals are something that you have with a drink before you go for a meal," explains Bella Bowring, co-owner of Gerald's Bar San Sebastian, speaking on this week's Basque-themed episode of Flight of Fancy, the Traveller podcast. "It's now become a different thing with people roaming around the pintxos bars and having one thing in each bar, and that being the way they have dinner.

"For locals it's a way to have a snack and a drink with your friends before you sit down to a proper meal. But the good thing about pintxos is it's an open-minded concept. It's also a nice way to eat, this new style, it feels like a quite sociable and lovely way to have a meal."

And what a meal. The Basque Country of northern Spain might just be the world's best destination for people who love to eat. The standard of cuisine here is incredibly high, from the cheapest pintxos bars to the most expensive fine-diners, from anonymous neighbourhood eateries to the world-famous likes of Asador Etxebarri and Elkano.

Sydney-based chef Lennox Hastie, who helms the wood-fired restaurant Firedoor and the soon-to-be-opened pintxos bar Gilda's, spent his formative years in the Basque Country, and explains that the secret to the success of the local cuisine is simple.

"It's that focus on just a small palette of really high-quality ingredients," Hastie tells Flight of Fancy. "And that ability to eat extremely well at every single level. You rarely see that in any city, where what you eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant has the same passion and drive going into it as the food in the bars."

It's fair to say that almost any restaurant around the world right now that is suddenly cooking with fire has been influenced by Etxebarri, the Basque grill, or "asador", that's currently ranked No.6 on the World's 50 Best restaurants list. Hastie's years working in the Etxebarri kitchen side-by-side with chef and owner Bitor Arguinzoniz changed his life and his idea of food forever.