Cider house menu in Hondarribia: what you'll eat (and what we won't tell you)

The first question before booking a table at a cider house is always the same: what exactly do you eat? It's a fair question. A cider house menu doesn't work like a normal restaurant's: you don't pick a dish, there's no à la carte to scan, and a lot of what happens at the table has more to do with a ritual than with an order.

So I'm going to tell you the whole thing. What the classic format is, what reaches the table and in what order, what to expect if it's your first time. Everything except one thing: our own menu. That one we keep on purpose, and I'll explain why below.

We're Higeralde Sagarlekua, a cider house in Hondarribia with views over the Cantabrian Sea. We're at Akartegi 37, open Wednesday to Sunday, and it's worth booking. We're a team of four, we've spent fifteen years in the world of the apple, we have two orchards of our own native apple varieties, and our cider is made by the Zelaia cider house in Hernani. We opened our doors on 4 March 2026, and we built this from a humble but ambitious place: the world of cider houses is changing, yet it holds on to its roots, and I like to move right in that balance. That says a fair bit about what you'll find at the table.

What a cider house menu in Hondarribia is like

First things first: at a traditional cider house you don't choose. There's a single, fixed menu, the same for the whole table. That's the format, plain and simple. It was born that way because the cider house wasn't a restaurant: it was the place where you tasted the year's cider, and the food was there to go with it.

That leads to four things that surprise first-timers:

• It's shared. The dishes arrive in the middle of the table, not at your seat.
• It's a fixed price. One set menu per guest, not a bill that adds up plate by plate.
• Rhythm rules, not the clock. You go from the table to the kupela and back, between bites.
• The drink is the axis. The food is built around the cider, not the other way round.

The classic order

This is the skeleton every Basque cider house shares, from Astigarraga to Hondarribia. It's not our menu:

1. Salt cod omelette — the opener, almost always.
2. Fried cod with peppers — the second step, and where the produce really shows.
3. Grilled chuletón (rib steak) — the heart of the meal, to share.
4. Cheese, quince paste and walnuts — the classic finish, no frills.

And in between, the cider. The whole time.

I'll say it again: this is the format of any Basque cider house, not ours. It's the backbone we all share. What changes from one house to another — and where the game is really played — is the produce and the hand behind each of those four steps.

So what about Higeralde Sagarlekua's menu?

If you've got this far looking for exactly that, here's where I have to be straight with you: I'm not going to tell you. And it's a deliberate decision, not an oversight. When we opened and I was asked about the menu in an interview, this is exactly what I answered, and I still stand by it:

«We've taken the traditional cider house menu and given it a twist I find really interesting. I think people will be surprised. In the end, that's what we're after: to offer something different while keeping the foundations. I'm not going to give away too many clues about what we serve, because I want guests to come and discover it for themselves.»

— from my interview in Noticias de Gipuzkoa, March 2026.

What I can tell you, because it's the part that doesn't depend on surprise but on standards, is that I look after the produce as much as I can and work with small, trusted producers. Besides our cider house menu, we have anchovies, txistorra and cheese... If you'd like to read at your own pace how I think about the cooking and the produce, I tell it on our menu page — but you won't find a dish list there either, and that's on purpose.

The cider: where it really comes from

This part I do tell in full, because it's where fifteen years of work sit.

The apples are ours, from our two orchards of native varieties. The cider, though, I don't make myself: it's made by the Zelaia cider house in Hernani. I say it plainly because there's nothing to hide: making cider is hugely expensive for a team of four, so for now we don't make it ourselves —though I don't rule it out for the future— and working with Zelaia is a stroke of luck, because they're a guarantee of quality and put real care into what they do.

At the table it arrives two ways: txotx from the kupela and bottled cider, both available all year round. It's marked by its freshness and by how easy it is to drink.

Ciders from Iparralde

This is probably the part of our bar you least expect.

Besides our own, we serve ciders from Iparralde — the French Basque Country. It's a region with a character of its own, one step away from joining the Euskal Sagardoa Protected Designation of Origin.

If cider genuinely interests you and not just as something to wash the meal down, that's a whole reason to make the trip up: you can compare, at the same table, two ways of understanding the same apple, on either side of the Bidasoa. It's not something you can do often.

The right frame of mind to come with

A cider house menu is a long, lingering meal: come hungry, unhurried, with no set time to leave. That's exactly the atmosphere I'm after — calm and welcoming, with local, quality produce, and no crowds.

That "no crowds" isn't just a nice phrase: we're four people, up at Akartegi 37, in the hillside of Hondarribia, with the Cantabrian Sea in view from the dining room. It's a place you climb up to on purpose and are in no rush to leave.

The txotx season: why when you come matters

The classic txotx season runs roughly from January to April. It's when all of Gipuzkoa opens its kupelas and you taste the year's cider straight from the barrel, and it's also, by far, the hardest time to get a table: demand grows year on year and bookings are made well ahead. If you come in those months, book early.

The difference at Higeralde is that you don't have to wait for that window: we keep the kupela open all year round. In season you'll get the full txotx atmosphere; the rest of the year it's just as available, with less of a scramble for a table. I wanted tasting cider straight from the barrel not to depend on the calendar.

Opening hours and bookings

We're small and we don't open every day. These are the real hours:

Day	Lunch	Dinner
Monday	Closed	Closed
Tuesday	Closed	Closed
Wednesday	Closed	20:00 – 22:30
Thursday	13:00 – 15:30	20:00 – 22:30
Friday	13:00 – 15:30	20:00 – 22:30
Saturday	13:00 – 15:30	20:00 – 22:30
Sunday	13:00 – 15:30	Closed

Wednesdays we open for dinner only, and Sundays for lunch only.

Address: Akartegi 37, 20280 Hondarribia (Gipuzkoa). Phone: +34 659 11 61 43. Bookings: through our booking form or by phone.

Book ahead, especially at weekends. With four of us on the team and a dining room with no crowds, there are only so many tables.

For now, the people who've made it up have rated us 4.9 out of 5 on Google, across 31 reviews. We're new and that figure will rise or fall over time, but it's what we have today. For me this is a long game: what matters is keeping the pace over the long run, once we're no longer the new thing.

Want to make it a longer stay?

The Casa Rural Higeralde guesthouse is right next door. Dinner without watching the clock and then waking up to valley views without getting in the car is, honestly, the best version of this plan.

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The cider house menu has centuries of format and very little fine print: produce, grill, cider and time. The rest —what we've done with those foundations— doesn't explain itself on a web page. And there's a reason we got into this: cider culture had been slowly fading, but it's coming back, and I want to do my bit to keep it growing.

Book your table and see for yourself.