Immersed as it is in the Parte Vieja's vast universe of pincho bars the new hotel hardly needed its own-house restaurant. The Lasala Plaza has no pretensions to five-star fuss yet its clean-lined modern rooms with a palette of greys and whites, solid wooden floors, top-level beds and bedlinens, Japanese WCs, and domotic lighting, are airy and comfortable. One side of the hotel abuts a quiet old-town square on the fringes of the Parte Vieja, while the other gives directly onto the old harbour with all its buzz and brouhaha.
This new hotel, in a grand 1917 building in the golden sandstone typical of San Sebastián, manages several clever tricks all at the same time. Altogether Arbaso (‘ancestor’ in Basque) has raised the neighbourhood’s self-esteem considerably. The hotel’s restaurant, Narru, where chef Iñigo Peña does his radically stripped-down Basque cocina de producto, lies at the centre of a growing restaurant ecosystem in Centro. Suites, so large they feel like apartments, have perfect views of the Cathedral from their grey-painted ornamental balconies. Natural materials (notably wood) are to the fore and there’s an elegant austerity in the interior design. Stupendously sited in a 19th-century apartment block in caramel-coloured stone, on a sedate square beside the neo-Gothic Cathedral, this easeful urban boutique is predicated on an idea of contemporary Basque-style fusing dark-hued minimalism with a respect for rural tradition. Arbaso, the city’s coolest new urban hotel, has changed all that. San Sebastian’s Centro neighbourhood was always the city’s administrative and retail hub but never had a great appeal to visitors. With more on the way – notably a Nobu, the chain's fourth opening in Spain, slated for March 2023 – the city can finally match its starry cuisine with a clutch of great places to stay. But the arrival of San Sebastián as a true hotel contender has happened only in recent years: first with the Akelarre, a high-design addition to Pedro Subijana's restaurant on Igeldo hill, and now with the superbly made-over Villa Soro, the chic downtown Arbaso, and the sublime Villa Favorita behind La Concha beach.
There was also no shortage of perfectly-adequate four-stars and pleasant-enough pensiones. True, there was always the glorious María Cristina, a timeless classic and still one of Spain's very finest grand hotels. In the matter of characterful hotels, however, it hasn't cut the mustard in quite the same way – which is all the more surprising given San Sebastián's long history as a watering place for the Spanish bourgeoisie. It still seems remarkable that a town with no more than 190,000 inhabitants should harbour no less than 19 Michelin stars among its innumerable restaurants and bars – a concentration greater even than Manhattan's. San Sebastián, as all the world knows, is a small city in the Basque Country whose reputation as a global gastronomic capital goes before it.
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