Spanish Restaurant Near Me on East Broadway: Ernesto's Basque Corner

Type spanish restaurant near me anywhere south of Delancey and one corner keeps coming back: Ernesto's, at 259 East Broadway where it meets Montgomery Street. This is not a sangria-and-paella room. Chef and owner Ryan Bartlow cooks the food of the Basque Country, the kind he learned while working at Akelarre, the three-Michelin-star restaurant above the sea near San Sebastián. The menu changes daily, and the wine list runs to 28 pages of Spanish bottles, sherry, vermouth and cider.

What makes Ernesto's different from other Spanish spots in Manhattan is its focus. Bartlow does not try to cover the whole peninsula. The kitchen sticks to Basque and northern Spanish cooking: salt cod, turbot over the grill, Iberian pork, beans, peppers and pintxos. The New York Times review that followed the late-2019 opening compared the cooking to the hearty, unfussy Basque meals Hemingway wrote about, and that idea runs through the whole restaurant, down to the name and a sandwich on the menu.

Start at the top of the menu with the section called Para picar, which means something to nibble. The gilda is the classic San Sebastián bar skewer of anchovy, olive and pickled guindilla pepper, and reviewers keep naming the vinegary version here. Croquetas come two ways, with chicken (gallina) or with jamón, and the tortilla is listed as Nuestra Tortilla, the house omelet. Txistorra sausage and morcilla with piquillo peppers round out the snacks for anyone ordering with a glass in hand.

The next section, Entradas, is where the cooking opens up. Pan con tomate arrives as grilled bread rubbed with tomato. Cinco Jotas Ibérico ham is served with potato chips, a combination you will see on bars all over Spain. The Bikini Hemingway is a pressed sandwich of txistorra sausage, cheese and shrimp on thin, crackly pan de cristal. Calamares fritos, an octopus salpicón and griddled mushrooms complete the sample menu. Order two or three of these to share and you have a full light dinner.

Main courses lean on the grill and on long-cooked northern classics. The sample menu lists turbot (rodaballo a la parrilla), salt cod in salsa verde, secreto ibérico pork and magret of duck, plus arroz de conejo, a rabbit rice, and a vegetable menestra for anyone skipping meat. Because the kitchen rewrites the list daily based on what arrives from fishmongers and farms, ask your server which fish came in that morning; the grilled whole fish is the dish that best shows off the charcoal.

Leave room for dessert, because the tarta de queso is the burnt Basque cheesecake that made La Viña in San Sebastián famous, and Ernesto's version has a following of its own. You can order a slice at the table, or buy a Whole Basque Cheesecake for $75 through the restaurant's online shop and pick it up for a birthday dinner at home. The other desserts are a classic crème caramel and a sorbet. Outside cakes are not allowed, and the restaurant offers no cake fee.

The drinks list is the reason many regulars sit at the bar. Xarmant, a 2024 txakoli from the Artomaña winery made from Hondarrabi Zuri, is poured by the carafe for $80, the same light sparkling white you would drink in a San Sebastián pintxo bar. Sherry is a serious category here: a glass of El Maestro Sierra fino is $16. A flight of three Spanish red vermouths costs $40, and Basque cider from Arratzain in Gipuzkoa is $45 a bottle. Ask the staff to pour cider high, the way it is done in Basque sagardotegi.

Plan around the hours. Ernesto's opens at 5:30 pm on Monday and at 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday, closing at 9:30 pm early in the week and at 10 pm Thursday to Saturday. It is closed on Sunday, so a weekend plan means Friday or Saturday. The first hour after the doors open is the simplest window for grabbing bar seats without a booking, and a late table near closing works for a lighter round of pintxos and a glass of sherry.

Reservations are taken through OpenTable, and the restaurant also answers booking requests at reservations@ernestosnyc.com. Groups larger than seven are routed to an events form rather than a standard table, so a big birthday dinner needs planning a few weeks out. If you are two people and flexible, the marble bar is the better seat anyway: you watch the pintxos being built and can order a single snack at a time, which suits a pre-theater visit or a quick drink.

The room is the other draw. The corner location gives Ernesto's a wall of tall windows along Montgomery Street, and a marble bar runs the full length of the space. Globe lights hang in pairs from the ceiling, and the tables are set close enough that the noise climbs as the night goes on.

Bartlow is a Lower East Side resident who cooked at Frenchette and Quality Eats before going out on his own. Ernesto's opened in the last week of 2019, a few months before the pandemic closed New York dining rooms, and it came through to become one of the neighborhood's anchor restaurants. He later opened Bartolo and co-wrote the cookbook Essentially Basque with food writer Laurie Woolever, published by Abrams, which is a good souvenir for anyone who wants to try the dishes at home.

Before or after dinner, the blocks around Ernesto's are some of the oldest on the Lower East Side. Henry Street Settlement, the social-service house founded by Lillian Wald in 1893, keeps its historic buildings a block south on Henry Street. Walk west along East Broadway and you reach Seward Park, with its playground and the Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library. Grand Street, a block north, has bakeries and corner stores if you want to keep walking afterward.

Practical notes: Ernesto's is at 259 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002; general questions go to info@ernestosnyc.com. Gift cards are sold on the website. Expect a full-service restaurant with servers and a bar, not counter ordering. Dinner here suits a date, a small celebration or anyone who has been to San Sebastián and misses it. Groups who want only paella and sangria should look elsewhere, because neither is the point at Ernesto's.