The Noriega Hotel on Baker Street has been serving Basque family-style dinners since 1893, making it one of the oldest continuously operating Basque restaurants in the United States. The format has not changed in a century: you sit at long communal tables, and the meal arrives in courses — soup, salad, bread and beans, a main course of lamb or beef, and wine served in pitchers. You eat with whoever happens to be sitting next to you, which is part of the experience.
The Noriega is the most historically significant of the three Bakersfield Basque restaurants. The building retains the atmosphere of a working boarding house, which is what it originally was — sheepherders would board here for weeks or months at a time, and the communal dining room was the social center of that life. The cooking is not refined, but it is generous, specific, and unlike anything else in California. Reservations are strongly recommended on weekends. The set-price dinner is the only option in the evenings; lunch is more casual.