Aurelia
A twelve-course reading of the Cantabrian, cooked over embers of Basque oak, forty metres from the water it comes out of.
- Service
- Wed – Sun, two seatings
- The book
- Opens 60 days ahead
- Since
- MMXVI
Nerea Aristegui cooks eight metres from the pass, on a grill her father welded in 1998 and she has refused to replace.
Nerea Aristegui — chef patrona
We cook one coastline, and we cook it only when it is ready.
My grandmother Amaia sold hake at the lonja for thirty-one years, in a stall four doors from where this dining room now is. She could tell you which boat a fish came off by looking at the eye. That is the whole philosophy of Aurelia, and everything else here is just equipment.
We buy from six boats and four farms. Nothing is flown in. If the swell keeps the Itsaslur in port on a Thursday, Thursday’s menu changes at eleven in the morning and the printer runs again at noon. Guests occasionally find this romantic. It is mostly just accurate.
The grill takes oak from Aizkorri, burnt down for two hours before the first plate. Almost every course passes over it or near it, even the ones that arrive cold. Fire is not a technique we use. It is the accent the whole kitchen speaks in.
We are twenty-two people for twenty-eight seats. Everyone who cooks a dish carries it out and says its name at the table. It slows service by about nine minutes a night, and we have never once considered stopping.
Six boats
Getaria, Orio and Mutriku. Names on the menu, every service.
Four farms
Vegetables from the Otxandio baserri, cut the same morning.
One fire
Oak from Aizkorri. Lit at 09:40, out by midnight.
Course VIII — rodaballo a la brasa · plate thrown by Ainhoa Zubiri
Twenty-eight seats, and the harbour doing the decorating
The building was a net loft. We took out two floors, left the beams black where the smoke had already taken them, and plastered everything else in lime the colour of the inside of a scallop. There is no art on the walls. At 21:40 in July the sun goes down behind Monte San Antón and the whole west wall turns the colour of the sauce on plate eight, and no painting was ever going to beat that.
Eight of the seats are at an oak counter facing the grill, close enough that you will smell the turbot before you are told about it. The other twenty are tables of two and four along the harbour windows. Linen is woven in Bergara. The plates are thrown by Ainhoa Zubiri from clay dug ninety minutes inland, and each one is slightly the wrong shape, which is the point.
Music is low and mostly nothing you would recognise. The room is quiet enough for a proposal and loud enough for a birthday, and after ten years we have learned to tell those two tables apart before they sit down.
- Seats
- 28
- At the fire
- 8
- Staff
- 22
- Open since
- 2016
Sala Aixerrota
The old sail room on the first floor, with its own stair off Kale Zaharra and windows on three sides of the harbour. One long chestnut table for fourteen, a small fire of its own, and a menu written with you rather than handed to you — Nerea presents each course herself, and Iker builds the pairing from the cellar rather than the list.
Six of the fourteen seats can be turned toward the pass if you would rather watch than talk. We host roughly forty private dinners a year, most of them the same eleven families twice over.
eventos@aureliagetaria.es- Table
- Fourteen guests seated · twenty standing
- Minimum spend, Wed – Thu
- €4,200
- Minimum spend, Fri – Sat
- €5,600
- Includes
- Bespoke menu, pairing, private stair, dedicated brigade
- Chef’s table, Mahai Nagusia
- Six guests at the pass · €385 per guest
- Notice
- Three weeks · four in August
- Held with
- €1,000 deposit, refundable to 14 days
We keep the good ones by the till and the bad ones in the office.
Aristegui cooks the Cantabrian the way a good editor cuts a paragraph — nothing added, everything sharper.
The turbot arrives whole, is carved a metre from your hands, and settles the argument about fire for the rest of your life.
Forty minutes from San Sebastián and, on a Thursday in October, quietly better than half of it.
- One Michelin Star · 2021 – 2026
- Premio Euskadi de Gastronomía · 2024
- Norte Awards · Seafood Restaurant of the Year 2025
- Green practice, Getaria Lonja Charter · founding signatory
Take a table
The book opens sixty days ahead at 10:00 CET. If the night you want is gone, telephone anyway — we hold four seats at the counter for the day itself, and they are given away on the phone, not online.
Before you come
How far ahead do you take bookings?
The book opens sixty days in advance at 10:00 CET, on the first of each month for the month sixty days out. Tables of two are released first; parties of five or more are held for the harbour room and confirmed by telephone.
Is there a deposit?
€80 per guest, taken at the time of booking and deducted from the final bill. Cancel or reduce the party more than 72 hours before service and it is returned in full; inside 72 hours we can usually move you rather than keep it.
Can you work around dietary requirements?
Yes, with 72 hours’ notice — including a full vegetable menu built from the Otxandio baserri, at the same price. Shellfish and dairy are threaded through almost everything, so please tell us when you book rather than when you sit.
Is there a dress code?
None. Half the dining room comes off the coast path in a fleece. Jackets are not required and never have been.
Where do we park?
The Puerto Deportivo car park is four minutes on foot along the quay, and free after 20:00. From San Sebastián the N-634 takes about thirty-five minutes; the Lurraldebus UK11 stops at Kale Nagusia.
Hours
- Wednesday
- 20:30
- Thursday
- 13:00 · 20:30
- Friday
- 13:00 · 20:30
- Saturday
- 13:00 · 20:30
- Sunday
- 13:00 only
- Monday & Tuesday
- closed
Annual closure 6 January – 4 February, and the last week of September for the Getaria fiestas.
Finding us
Muelle de San Pedro 420808 Getaria, Gipuzkoa
Euskadi, Spain