Hostal Burguete Restaurant
Ernest Hemingway stayed at this whitewashed inn on Calle San Nicolás in 1923 and again in 1925, famously fishing the Río Irati and writing parts of what would become The Sun Also Rises. The restaurant still serves the kind of honest Navarrese cooking that would have fuelled those trout-fishing expeditions.
What to Order
The menú del día (around €14–16) is the best-value way to eat here: expect a first course of white asparagus from Navarre with house vinaigrette or a thick vegetable stew (menestra de verduras), followed by fresh trout from the Irati river pan-fried in butter and jamón, the dish most associated with this valley.
Dessert is invariably a cuajada — a traditional Basque-Navarrese curd set in a clay pot and drizzled with honey — or a wedge of Idiazabal sheep's cheese with quince paste. The house Navarra rosado, poured cold, is the only wine you need to consider.
The Hemingway Connection
Room 8, where Hemingway slept, has been preserved with period furniture and a small display of photographs. The owners are matter-of-fact about the literary heritage — no kitschy memorabilia, just the same creaking floorboards and low wooden ceilings the writer knew.
The inn's guest book contains entries from pilgrims, fly-fishermen and literary tourists going back decades, and the bar area still has the unhurried, slightly timeless quality that Hemingway described as the best thing about Burguete.
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