iBAi by Paulo Airaudo

The day begins at the fish counter

Kokotxas set the pace before the pass warms. Alicio Garro, chef at iBAi by Paulo Airaudo in Old Town, San Sebastián, works from the Basque seafood discipline that made Ibai part of local dining memory: catch first, season first, the kitchen answering to what arrived that morning. His earlier chapter at Ibai shaped a method built on restraint rather than display, with daily menus set by the market and by the condition of the fish, vegetables, and shellfish at the door. The reopened house carries that name forward in a different frame, now under the iBAi by Paulo Airaudo sign, but Garro’s place in the story remains tied to the original grammar of the room: no fixed routine for its own sake, no garnish doing the work of product. Nearly four decades of local reputation sit behind that grammar. In San Sebastián, where culinary memory is exacting and comparison comes quickly, Garro’s name stayed close to hake, anchovies, and kokotxas because the cooking knew when to stop.

Kokotxas, prawns, and the market’s correction

The program at iBAi by Paulo Airaudo is built around a tasting menu that changes with San Martín and La Brecha, the markets that give the kitchen its daily terms. The structure is formal, but the method stays close to the Basque table: grilled carabinero prawns, hake kokotxas, turbot, sole, squid in black ink, rice with clams, sauces held together by fish gelatin, olive oil, garlic, and parsley. One account of the current menu describes five hake cheek kokotxas in a single course, two battered, two grilled, one confit, a small lesson in texture without leaving the ingredient. Pil-pil matters here because it asks for patience at the stove, not ornament. The pan, the collagen, the oil, and the cook’s wrist have to agree. Vegetables from Igeldo can sit beside turbot without turning the plate away from the coast. The wine program is curated around the meal rather than announced over it, with seafood setting the line for the cellar.

A basement room with the pass close by

The room is downstairs, intimate and quiet, with the kind of basement scale that keeps the pass in the diner’s field of attention. The upstairs bar belongs to the quicker appetite of pintxos and wine; below, the service slows into a sequence, and the room reads more like a house than a stage. Renovation has brightened the space, but the useful feeling is still proximity. Plates do not travel far. The counter rhythm is audible in the pauses between courses, and the cooking’s simplicity leaves little cover for error. A prawn arrives grilled, not disguised. Kokotxas arrive by texture, not by explanation. That is why the old Ibai memory still matters inside the new room: the place asks the kitchen to make a clear decision, then leave it alone. The venue ends on the craft rather than a forecast, with Alicio Garro’s hake kokotxas.