There’s an article in the Sunday (tomorrow’s) travel section of the New York Times by Sarah Wildman entitled “Basque Without Borders.” It’s a lovely article, a narrative of a short trip eating across the Basque country of northern Spain and southwestern France.

Coincidentally, I just returned from a similar short trip to the Basque country to visit my aunt in Bakio, a little seashore town outside of Bilbao.  She spends half the year there and I’ve been going there, on and off, my whole life (so far, as they add in Maine.)

For me, it was a trip back in time to visit people I hadn’t seen in years and, of course, a chance to eat crazy great food.  That little corner of the world has always seemed to me to have the best food anywhere and growing up it was always confusing to me that my friends in Bakio seemed to eat, to live, so much better than the rest of us.

What’s really startling, though, about the article, to me, is that the bar I grew up visiting, Itxas-Ondo, is so prominently described in Wildman’s article.  This is a little neighborhood bar, one of dozens in the town of Bakio alone.  It’s in a garage in the basement of the building where my aunt has an apartment, and where my parents used to own an apartment.  It’s her local and she can reliably be found there with her friends every night, during the summer season, from eight to ten or later at night.

I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out in Ixtas-Ondo and we have lots of family stories set there.  It’s really jarring to see it in the New York Times, especially since I just happened to return from there after an absence of seven years.  But I can highly recommend the pintxos and txakoli, especially the salty fish and pepper sandwiches up there next to the napkin holder by the old lady.  Those are especially good.

More on this later.