About Amelia
Paulo Airaudo was born in Córdoba, Argentina, trained across Europe, and chose San Sebastian — which tells you everything about his ambitions and his palate. His two-Michelin-star restaurant, Amelia, occupies the lower level of the Hotel Villa Favorita, a boutique property set directly on La Concha Bay with views across one of Europe's most beautiful urban beaches. The setting alone would make this worth visiting. The cooking makes it unmissable.
With only 25 covers, Amelia operates at a scale that removes most of the distance that fine dining at this level usually maintains. Airaudo cooks for you in the way that a genuinely gifted private chef would: with complete attention and a tasting menu that changes with the season and with whatever has arrived that morning from the market, the sea, and the farms in the surrounding hills. The cooking combines the structural confidence of classical European technique with the ingredient sensibility of the Basque Country and — more subtly — the warmth and generosity of South American hospitality. The result is two-star cooking that feels personal rather than institutional.
The menu is a single tasting format, available with wine pairing. Standout dishes have included sea urchin with txakoli foam and smoked bone marrow, line-caught turbot with Idiazabal whey and black truffle, and a dessert sequence that borrows from Airaudo's Argentine childhood in ways that are playful rather than nostalgic. The sommelier is excellent — strong in Basque white wines, adventurous in the international list, and genuinely helpful in navigating the pairing.
The service team, small by necessity, creates the most genuinely intimate fine dining atmosphere in the city. At Arzak or Berasategui, you are a guest at an institution. At Amelia, you feel like you are dining at the home of a chef who is very glad you came and has been thinking about what to cook for you all week. The most exciting two-star restaurant in the Basque Country.
First Date — The Room That Changes Everything
Twenty-five seats, La Concha Bay through the window, a chef who cooks as if the evening matters — Amelia is the finest first date restaurant in the Basque Country. The intimacy of the room does the work that conversation sometimes cannot: it tells the other person that you care enough to know about this place and to choose it deliberately. The tasting menu removes the menu anxiety of a first encounter. The service is warm enough that nervousness dissipates with the first amuse-bouche. By the time the main course arrives, the evening will have the character it needs. At the end, the walk along La Concha promenade as the bay reflects the city lights is the closing argument for a night that needs no improving. Book the early seating and leave the evening open.