We’re about to step over the threshold of the txoko or, as I’ve taken to thinking of it, the man cave. Women can enter this establishment but they’re not allowed to cook. I like it already. “The txokos were created as a place for men to meet,” says our guide, Maria. “For a day or two a month, they can just be men – they play cards, they cook and gather with their friends for lunch.”
This social club, tucked away in the corner of a square in Bilbao – apt, because ‘txoko’ comes from the Basque word for little corner or nook – is one of around 1,500 such gastronomic societies across northern Spain. They originated in the late
