Search for Restaurante Josetxo today and most listings mark it “closed.” A 2012 closure headline, a review site with no updates since, an awards page frozen in the past tense. Every one of them is technically accurate and collectively misleading. Josetxo did close its doors under that name in September 2012, after 57 years. What almost none of the English-language coverage mentions is that the same family reopened at the same Pamplona address three years later, under a new name, with several of the original dishes still on the menu.
This matters beyond a footnote for restaurant trivia. Josetxo was not a minor address. It was the restaurant that brought Navarra its first Michelin star, in 1974, decades before Pamplona had the cluster of starred kitchens it has today. Treating that history as dead, rather than as the founding chapter of a restaurant still operating under a different name, erases the throughline of one of the city’s longest running hospitality families.
What follows draws on the family’s own account of the restaurant’s history, a 2017 interview with the daughter who answered the phone the day the Michelin star was announced, and the archived record of a national culinary award the restaurant won in 2008, cross checked against each other for consistency.
A First-Floor Restaurant on Calle Estafeta
Restaurante Josetxo opened in 1955, founded by Alejandro Elizari and Felisa García in a first-floor apartment on Calle Estafeta, the same street the encierro runs down every morning of San Fermín. It was not a grand launch. It was a family-run dining room above street level, built on García’s cooking and Elizari’s front of house management.
The restaurant’s own account of its history names two of its most notable early guests: the singer Antonio Machín and the writer Ernest Hemingway. Neither detail is invented for this article. Both appear in the restaurant’s family-authored history and in an independent 2012 dining review that predates the closure, which is the standard this site holds every named person or place to before printing it.
Within its first two decades, Josetxo built a reputation for a specific kind of Navarran cooking: traditional in its roots, refined in its execution, built around the vegetables and produce the region is known for. That reputation is what carried the restaurant into 1974, the year everything changed for it.
Navarra’s First Michelin Star Came From a Kitchen Nobody Expected
In 1974, Restaurante Josetxo became the first restaurant in Navarra to receive a Michelin star. Mari Carmen Elizari, one of the founders’ daughters, was the person who picked up the phone when the news arrived. In a 2017 interview, she described how little the honor registered at the time: “Cogí el teléfono y me dieron la enhorabuena, pero no le di mayor importancia. Entonces era algo que casi ni se conocía.” At the time, the Michelin star was barely known in Spain outside professional kitchens. Elizari said her real measure of success was never the award. It was returning customers.
The star belonged, by her account, to her mother’s cooking. Felisa García ran the kitchen, working traditional Navarran dishes, pochas con codornices (bean stew with quail), a seafood zarzuela, canutillos, and apple tarts, with a level of care Elizari described as turning even the simplest plate into something exceptional. García earned the region’s first Michelin star roughly two decades into the restaurant’s life, at a kitchen her daughter says she ran without much interest in accolades.
This is a specific, documented claim, not a generic one: Restaurante Josetxo was Navarra’s first Michelin-starred restaurant, full stop, a full generation before the current wave of starred kitchens in Pamplona.
Encierro Mornings From the Balcony
Josetxo’s connection to San Fermín was not incidental. Sitting on Calle Estafeta, directly on the encierro route, the restaurant became a fixture of fiesta week for the family that ran it. Elizari recalled that during San Fermines the family did not leave the building for eight straight days, watching both the festival and the encierro itself from the restaurant’s windows.
Each morning she had to be up within hours of going to bed to open the balcony so guests staying or dining at Josetxo could watch the run pass beneath them. She was explicit that this was never a paid service in those years: no charge for the balcony view, and no charge for the breakfast served to guests afterward. It was, in her words, done out of affection for the clientele rather than as a business line. That detail places Josetxo inside the encierro’s own daily rhythm during fiesta week, not just adjacent to it.
A Move to Plaza Príncipe de Viana, and a National Award
In 1985, the second generation, Elizari and her sister Raquel, along with their husbands Juan Oscáriz and Ricardo Eciolaza, relocated the restaurant from Calle Estafeta to Plaza Príncipe de Viana, in the center of Pamplona. The new location occupied two floors of a late 19th-century building with historic-monument protection, a considerable step up from the first-floor apartment where the restaurant began.
Josetxo kept building on its reputation over the following decades. In 2008, the restaurant won the VII Premio Nacional de Gastronomía Tradicional Lola Torres, a national award selected that year from 79 competing establishments across Spain. The jury’s citation praised the kitchen as “de mercado, refinada, delicada y muy personal,” market driven, refined, delicate, and highly personal, and specifically called out the restaurant’s use of Navarran garden produce: espárragos de Lodosa, alubias de Tolosa, and pimientos del piquillo. The award was framed explicitly as a recognition of Navarran cuisine as a whole, with Josetxo standing in as its representative.
Closure, and a Reopening Under a New Name
Restaurante Josetxo closed in September 2012, after 57 years, reported at the time as the result of personal circumstances within the family. For three years, the address on Plaza Príncipe de Viana sat empty of the restaurant that had defined it.
In October 2015, the founders’ grandchildren, Raquel Eciolaza and Juan Oscáriz, reopened at the same location under a new name: Errejota. The name is a compact piece of family history. “Erre” for restaurante, “Jota” for Josetxo, and, deliberately, the same initials as the two owners now running it. Errejota kept the address, kept the family, and kept a handful of dishes directly off the old Josetxo menu, including manitas deshuesadas (boned pig’s trotters), txangurro a la donostiarra, and huevos rotos, alongside a newer menu built around the same market driven philosophy the restaurant was known for under its original name.
What did not carry over was the Michelin star. Pamplona’s current Michelin-starred restaurants are Kabo, El Molino de Urdániz, Rodero, and Restaurante Europa. Errejota is not among them. The 1974 star belonged to Josetxo’s specific kitchen under Felisa García, and it did not transfer automatically to the next generation’s menu, even at the same address and under the same family’s ownership.
Errejota is open today at Plaza Príncipe de Viana, 1, in the center of Pamplona, run by the third and fourth generations of the same family that opened a first-floor dining room on Calle Estafeta in 1955, joining another of Pamplona’s historic restaurant families that never really disappeared, just changed shape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Restaurante Josetxo still open in Pamplona?
Not under that name. Josetxo closed permanently in September 2012. The same family reopened at the same address in October 2015 under the name Errejota, which is currently operating.
What happened to Restaurante Josetxo?
It closed in 2012 after 57 years due to personal circumstances within the family. Three years later, the founders’ grandchildren reopened the restaurant at the same Plaza Príncipe de Viana location as Errejota, keeping several signature dishes from the original menu.
Does Errejota still have Josetxo’s Michelin star?
No. Josetxo earned Navarra’s first Michelin star in 1974 under chef Felisa García. That star was tied to that specific kitchen and era. It did not carry over when the restaurant reopened as Errejota in 2015, and Errejota is not on Pamplona’s current list of Michelin-starred restaurants.
Where is Errejota located in Pamplona?
Errejota is at Plaza Príncipe de Viana, 1, in central Pamplona, the same building Restaurante Josetxo moved into in 1985.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.