Bar of the month: El Rincón de Hemingway, Pamplona

It’s strange how you could quite conceivably visit Café Iruña, which proudly presides over Pamplona’s Plaza del Castillo, and not realise Hemingway’s Bar was even there. The great man is remembered in El Rincón de Hemingway (Hemingway’s corner) which, rather mysteriously, is not immediately obvious unless a member of staff directs you to it – it’s a separate, rather unassuming bar on the side of the main dining hall. But I shall be forever grateful to el garzón, who kindly ushered me in.

I suppose it’s because Café Iruña, with its intricate Belle Époque décor, is right up there with the finest grand cafés in the world, evoking on an intimate scale the glamour and craft of a bygone era, so takes all the plaudits itself. It was the first establishment in the city to be lit by electric light, and a whiff of old-world charm still penetrates its lavish interior, almost as if time has stood still for well over 100 years from when it first opened back in 1888. It opened on the eve of San Fermín, or the running of the bulls as it’s universally known, one of the greatest fiestas on planet Earth. The fact that the festivities of a city with less than 200,000 inhabitants became known globally is thanks to the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s obsession, yet in later life Hemingway felt his celebratory words, which had transformed what was essentially a provincial party into a global event, had created a monster and a city he no longer recognised.

El Rincón de Hemingway is the personification of a secret tip: tucked away behind a frosted-glass door it reveals itself like a grandiose train carriage, complete with chessboard floor, elaborate luminaires and alcoves instead of doors. It’s a dark-panelled wood and mirrored walls kind of affair, with Hemingway propped up at the bar at the far end drinking his hangovers away – well, a life-sized statue at any rate.

Maybe that’s the beauty of the place, that there aren’t bells and whistles luring punters in. It’s as though the local Navarrese want to keep it to themselves. Iruña has gone down in the history of universal literature as the meeting point for the main characters of Hemingway’s seminal Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, the novel which catapulted him to worldwide stardom as one of the greatest writers of all time and put Pamplona well and truly on the map. ‘We had coffee at the Iruña,’ writes Hemingway, ‘sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square.’ It became somewhat of a base camp where the protagonists would regularly meet for coffee, snack on a pintxo or two and usually, in Hemingway’s case, imbibe something a little stronger. His go-to tipple was the humble daiquiri, believe it or not, homogenising a tantalising trinity of rum, lime and sugar on a bed of crushed ice, deftly dovetailing strength, sourness and sweetness. But he would have been partial to the local vino, too, so raise a toast to the great man by ordering a bottle of Pago de Cirsus Crianza to help wash down your feast of delectable pintxos from the menu. Where to start? Fried anchovies, chopitos (cuttlefish) with Padrón peppers, blood sausage with piquillos… You know the score, keep going until you’re full, but whatever you do, leave room for a slice of its game-changing potato tortilla. My God, is it good.