BILBAO

Renowned for its art and riverfront architecture, Bilbao is a city of chattering markets, long nights and football-mad locals, but it also knows a thing or two about good food and drink. Ben Lerwill Slawek Kozdrasw

Cyclists buzz under plane trees as traffic purrs past baroque churches. Two newlyweds are on the riverside, posing for photos. The groom is wearing a beige three-piece suit (you can get away with that sort of thing in Bilbao) and the bride a flowy white dress, the breeze catching the gauze and billowing it out, cloaking both husband and wife in a feather-light cloud of material. They giggle and embrace. Behind them, the River Nervión flows wide and blue under the sleek lines of the Zubizuri footbridge.

But Bilbao hasn’t always provided a photogenic backdrop. Thirty years ago, the idea of having your wedding shots taken at the water’s edge would have been laughable — the river was a murky, odoriferous thing, the quayside a mass of rusting industry. But the largest city in the Basque Country has since morphed into one of the most vaunted examples of urban regeneration in Europe, full of chattering markets, long nights and proud, football-mad locals, and was even designated an official UNESCO City of Design in 2014. Today, you can almost sense it swelling out its chest with self-confidence, glass of txakoli white wine in one hand and salt cod croquette in the other.

Visitors will want to loosen their belts a notch or two, because this is a city that knows a thing or two about good food and drink, filling its larder with a bounty of produce from the Atlantic, the lush farmland of the surrounding hills and vineyards carpeting the valleys. Wander the city’s streets and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s permanently on lunch hour. Glasses are knocked back before noon, bakeries bulge with customers and pintxo bars throng with besuited workers. Near-neighbour San Sebastián might draw the international foodie garlands, but the bilbaínos eat and drink with relish.

“Cooking is simpler in Bilbao,” says chef Paul Ibarra, speaking to me at his lively Basque restaurant, Los Fueros, which has been pulling in locals since

1878. Behind him, families pick through platters of grilled prawns. “In San Sebastián, the food is more elaborate, more Frenchinfluenced. Here, simple is good. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you cook something, it has to be marvellous; the flavours have nowhere to hide.”

To make his point, Paul sizzles off a portion of hake in olive oil, sprinkles it with sea salt, adds a dollop of roasted pepper mayonnaise and places it before me. “I don’t know about you,” he says, “but if I die tomorrow, this would be my last meal.” The fish is golden, with a slight crunch to the bite. It would be a fine choice, to be fair.

Chef Paul Ibarra, of Los Fueros restaurant; the Zubizuri footbridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; pintxos at Mercado de la Ribera

Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture Maman, outside the Guggenheim Musuem Bilbao

“And look,” Paul says, proffering a bottle of txakoli. “The white wine here is different to San Sebastián’s. We use the same grape, but theirs is sparkling. Ours has no bubbles.” He pours some out for me, the chilled wine causing condensation to form on the glass in seconds. It’s crisp, fruity and sublimely fresh. “No bubbles, just good wine,” says Paul.

“That tells you something about Bilbao.”

TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

None of which is to say that the city lacks fizz. Bilbao can be showy, even flamboyant at times. Its transformation over recent decades has left a very visible legacy, with one particular project standing as a (literally) shining example. When it opened in 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had the world’s cultural commentators falling over themselves with excitement. Its giant, sinuous, metallic form was likened to a cross between a palace and a ship. Today, over two decades on, the museum remains a worldclass attraction, inside and out.

Perhaps inevitably, the Guggenheim has its own Michelin-starred restaurant, Nerua Guggenheim Bilbao. Focused on seasonal Basque ingredients, its best-known dishes include a sole and clam cream soup and a smoked eel ravioli with beetroot and green apple. Maritime influences are everywhere you turn in this port city, from the set menus to the architecture. I even arrive by overnight ferry, and there aren’t many city-break destinations where you can do that.

“It’s hard to explain how much Bilbao has changed since the 1970s,” guide Miriam Ruíz López tells me as we wander the streets around energetic Plaza Moyúa. Around us, grand hotels look out over trim lawns and curvy, Norman Foster-designed subway entrances. “People know us now for our art and our riverside architecture, but when I was growing up there was an urban myth that the water was so dirty that if you fell in, you’d die.”

Bilbao’s long history has been shaped by its estuary location. From its beginnings in the year 1300, this has always been a city of seafarers, traders and shipbuilders, a place happy to draw its influences from all compass points. At the same time, of course, it’s also somewhere that prides itself on its self-determination. A case in point: the city’s top-flight football team, Athletic Bilbao, famously still employs a Basque-only policy for its player recruitment. In all sorts of respects, Madrid is a distant notion.

The produce used by the city’s bars and restaurants also belongs squarely to the region. At the Mercado de la Ribera,