The Ultimate Pintxos Guide in Bilbao

You could spend a week before your visit to Bilbao reading up on what to see, where to go and everything you need to know about the city, but… the real way to experience the Bilbao way of life is…  at the bars – the traditional ones.

Pop into any tasca in the Casco Viejo at 7 pm and you’ll see it: a wall lined with little plates, a crowd packed three deep at the bar, and a rhythm of ordering, eating and moving on that the people of Bilbao have been perfecting since long before ‘gastronomic culture’ even had a name. That activity also has a name — txikiteo — and understanding it will make all the difference between a tourist who ‘tried traditional food’ and those who really ate like a local basque.

Today, as the guides of the best foodie tour in Bilbao, we want to help you with the basics: what pintxos are (and how they differ from tapas), how the traditional activity of txikiteo or poteo actually works, the right attitude to adopt so you blend in like a local, and where to start

But without a doubt, the best way to find out – if you don’t want to overcomplicate things – is with our pintxos tour, where we’ll take you to our favourite spots… which, if we told you about them here… we’d have to kill you!

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What exactly is a pintxo?

A pintxo (plural: pintxos, from the Basque word for “spike” or “thorn”) is a small bite of food, traditionally served on a slice of bread and held together with a toothpick — the “spike” that gives the dish its name. The classic example is the gilda: a single skewer of an anchovy, an olive, and a pickled green guindilla pepper, invented in Bilbao’s Casco Viejo in the 1940s and named after the Rita Hayworth film for being “green, sour, and a little bit tasty.”

Pintxos are a Basque invention, distinct from the tapas of southern Spain in a few important ways:

• They’re pre-made and displayed on the bar, so you choose by pointing rather than ordering blind from a menu (though many bars now also serve hot pintxos made to order).
• They’re eaten standing , not at a table (traditionaly, that’s a matter of taste).
• They’re not free. Unlike some tapas traditions, pintxos are charged individually, usually somewhere between 2€ and 5€ each, it depends on the bar.
• They’re meant to be part of a route, not a full meal in one place. Which brings us to the plan itself.

Instead of wandering aimlessly, you start your trip with confidence and direction.

Basque local culture

‘Txikiteo’ (from the Basque word ‘txikito’, meaning ‘small’ and referring to a small glass of wine) is the local custom of going from bar to bar in a group – whether with friends or family – having a drink and one or two pintxos at each stop before moving on to the next. It is not so much a pub crawl as a travelling dinner: the important thing is not to visit as many bars as possible, but rather the conversation, the stroll between one bar and the next, being able to sample various pintxos in a single afternoon and finding your favourite spots, even going so far as to have your own regular barman. There’s also the weekly tradition of the ‘pintxopote’, where on Thursdays many bars offer a special price for a drink and a pintxo, so people head out onto the streets from 7 pm onwards to enjoy the vibe.  

A few things to know before you join in:

Order a zurito, not a pint. The traditional drink is a zurito — a small glass of draft beer, roughly half the size of a standard caña. Ordering small is the whole point: it lets you keep moving without getting full or drunk before the third stop. If beer isn’t your thing, a glass of txakoli (the local slightly sparkling white wine, often poured from a height to aerate it) or a small glass of red wine is just as authentic.

Stay for one drink, then move. Two pintxos and a zurito per bar is the standard rhythm. Staying for a meal at the very first bar takes us away from what we’ve come to enjoy; it’s no longer about going for pintxos, it’s about going out for dinner or lunch – which can also be a good plan, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.

Pay as you go. In most traditional bars, you settle up after each round rather than opening a tab. Bartenders keep a mental tally of what you’ve had, and it’s normal to ask “¿cuánto es?” (how much is it?) when you’re ready to move on.

Go early, or go late. Bilbao’s txikiteo has two natural windows: the pre-lunch pintxo-pote around 1–2pm, and the main event from around 8pm to 10:30pm, before dinner (yes, dinner comes after). Showing up at 6pm expecting a lively bar scene is a rookie mistake — that’s a quiet hour in the Old Town.

Go in group, if you can. Txikiteo is inherently social. A kuadrilla (a tight friend group) is the traditional unit, but plenty of visitors happily do it in pairs — or join a guided pintxos tour, which solves the “which bar, which pintxo, in what order” question for you on your first night in town.