Thanks all for providing so much helpful info in our trip planning. My wife is now ~5 months pregnant, which makes the trip both welcome and more complicated. We are only hitting up a la carte places with online menus, so we’ll be able to avoid raw seafood/meat fine, I think. But since we aren’t super familiar with cooking of these regions, there are details that I’m unsure about and haven’t found concrete answers online, mostly around undercooked eggs and unpasteurized milk.
Any general advice is greatly appreciated. A couple specific question as well:
Is the La Vina cheesecake ok for her?
Should we avoid tortillas with runny centers?
Are milk/cheese generally pasteurized at sit down restaurants or should we ask every time?
I’ve read from some sources to be cautious of house made sauces like mayo which could contain raw eggs. Is it common to ask for the sauce on the side?
In the US, we would ask for medium well done for steak (for internal temp > 63° C), can we ask for the same in steakhouses in Spain? I don’t want to annoy or offend anybody. (currently booked Lana Madrid)
I think others here will have more to offer but address a couple of your concerns. I’m not sure about the cheesecake or tortillas as I am not sure where the concerns lie beyond egg or cheese cooking and I don’t know what the safe temps might be from your perspective. On milk and beef:
Most milk you will encounter in coffees is UHT. It’s possible there is some unpasteurized milk/cream used but dairy in Spain is not a strong point due to the widespread use of UHT milk (some area like Austrias, Galicia are exceptions). In a gastronomic restaurant you may want to ask.
You can certainly order your steak more done. I’m attaching here a guide with temperatures and terminology.
As to the tortillas, you probably want to avoid those that are prepared “Betanzos” style (from the village of Betanzo, Galicia), which will be very runny. Since I don’t know where you plan to try the tortilla española, it’s hard to make a specific suggestion.
But if you plan to visit San Sebastián, the very popular Bodega Donostiarra on Peña y Goñi at number 13 makes individual tortillas , some filled with anchovies or cod or roquefort that won’t be “runny”, Betanzos style.
As to the beef, Spaniards prefer their beef cooked “al punto”, which in many cases can be very rare, especially in the Basque Country. If you plan on dining at Casa Julián in Tolosa, the chef will cook it the way he wants, period.
At the other beef temple, Horma Ondo to the east of Bilbao the chuleta, rib steak, is presented on an individual grill so that you can cook it a bit more if needed. The same is true at the wonderful and not internationally known Taberna Mikel Bengoa in Mungía, also in the Vizcaya countryside.
My husband ordered wild boar meatballs here in Valladolid at a Repsol sunned and Michelin recommended restaurant and they were presented very rare on the inside.
He remarked that a non-Spaniard visiting would most likely have sent them back to the kitchen for further cooking.
At Lana, the Argentinian beef temple here in Madrid, you should probably order your steak “hecho”. It might be a good idea there to explain that your wife is pregnant and show the waiter the very handy guide that tigerjohn has posted.
Awesome, thank you both.
Steak and basque cheesecake are what she really craves, and tortilla she can live without (though we never had the real deal ones in Spain).
As a retired doctor (in medicine) I was intrigued by the restrictions imposed to your wife (congratulations, by the way) and looked at the recommandations of the Mayo Clinic by curiosity https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/pregnancy-nutrition/art-20043844. Well, it makes me wonder how the human race managed to survive and reproduce during milleniums passed… I guess we are less resistant than our ancestors :o) Enjoy your trip in any case. In Lisbon, you should not have any problem choosing à la carte, and every waiter speaks English in any case so it will be easy for you to explain what you want. Apart from oysters, all the shellfish is eaten cooked in Portugal. Ordering your meat “bem passado” might get a frown from the Chef, but you can always send it back if necessary to be recooked. Milk is always UHT or pasteurized, so are most cheeses unless you buy them directly from a small producer. I have never seen an omelette under-cooked here, I always have to request mine very underdone :o)
The famous (burnt on top) cheesecake you’ll find at La Viña in the Old Quarter of San Sebastián, made famous by food bloggers and Marti Buckley’s book, Basque Country.
After La Viña’ s cheesecake became famous it has been copied by the shops there, called Bassk Cheesecakers.
Haha, it does seem like the US guidelines are the most strict. If you look up FDA’s rules about seafood during pregnancy, they recommend only 3 servings of any seafood per week! My wife already threatened me with violence if I dared to enforce that in Spain and Portugal. Thankfully her OB didn’t think that was necessary, and her opinion is good enough for us.
Note that at steak-focused restaurants if they offer different cuts, ask them which would be better served at the 63 degree temperature. I’ve noticed more and more high end places (in different countries) suggesting slightly longer cooking than medium rare (somewhere between that and medium) for certain cuts for better flavor and those cuts might work best at 63 degrees.
Thanks everyone, we are all done with the trip, and had a great time, though we might have had too many croquettes when hot tapas options were lacking (surprise winner is the Bar Manero oxtail croquette)
It did seem like the chefs were physically unable to bring themselves to cook steaks to “real” medium well though haha. Even after communicating in both English and asking for Hecho, the steaks still came out way more red at both Lana in Madrid and Narru in San Sebastian.
Just a tidbit,
The World’s Best… just came out with its 2025 “100 World’s Best Steak Restaurants” list, and Lana made the number 8 position. Number 3 is Laia in Hondarribia (Gipuzkoa). I’ve had steak in Spain in 6 of the top 50 but need to get to Amaren in Bilbao, rated as number 31.
To be clear, we still enjoyed Narru (this board recommended their vegetables, so we got the only one they had on the menu at the time of our visit - the asparagus were wonderful and more delicious than ones we had in Tabelog Gold restaurants in Japan) and Lana (best empanadas we had on this trip, probably due to high quality beef used, and they may have the most perfectly cooked fries) very much.
The steaks were also fantastic, just that my wife had to limit herself to the more cooked edges.
It’s just hard to take these lists seriously. I’ve been to many of the streakhouses in Spain on the list and they are all better than the ones listed in Singapore and Australia, which I have been to many times (including a certain comically overrated #5 which i go to several times a year for business reasons). I’ve enjoyed my meals at Firedoor in Sydney (#16) but consistency just isn’t there; I’ve never had anything but a very good experience at the Spanish places on the list.
I suppose regionality is important but I’d avoid an actual ranking in that case.
