🇪🇸 Spain · Family: Pintxo · Region: San Sebastián · Bread: barra · Proteins: anchovy
The Pintxo de Gilda is the original pintxo and the one everything else in this catalog descends from: a green guindilla pepper, a salt-cured anchovy, and an olive, threaded onto a single toothpick. It carries no bread at all, which makes it the outlier in the family, and it is named after Rita Hayworth's character in the film Gilda for being salty, a little spicy, and sharp. It is served cold, eaten in one or two bites straight off the skewer, and it works as a near-perfect compressed lesson in balance.
The build is the whole craft, since there is nothing to cook. A pickled guindilla, or two or three depending on the bar, is folded and pierced onto a toothpick along with a quality salt-cured anchovy fillet and a green olive, usually a manzanilla. The order and folding matter more than they look: the guindillas are threaded so each bite delivers pepper, fish, and olive together rather than in sequence, and the anchovy is worked around the skewer so it does not tear. Some bars add a splash of good olive oil over the assembled skewer. Sloppy versions use a harsh over-brined anchovy that flattens everything into salt, a mushy or bitter olive, or guindillas with no acidity left, and the balance collapses. A correct Gilda hits sharp pickle, savory cured fish, and briny fruit in one go, with the vinegar lifting it and the oil rounding it off.
Variations are conservative because the formula is already tight. The most common adjustment is the number and heat of the guindillas, or swapping in a hotter pickled pepper for more bite; some versions use a boquerón in vinegar instead of a salt-cured anchoa, which trades depth for brightness, and others add a folded slice of pickled onion or a caper. The olive variety shifts the finish from buttery to grassy. The flat anchovy-on-bread pintxo shares two of these three ingredients but is a different object built around the slice, and it deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here.
More from this family
Other Pintxo sandwiches in Spain: