Gastronomy Valencia

There are many variations of this recipe, and even experts cannot determine which one is the original Paella. Best known is what Valencianos call Paella Marinera: rice with saffron, sea-food and vegetables. Often is added chicken to it (Paella Mixta). The Paella which Valencianos use to call Valenciana is all different: it consists of chicken and snails (plus the base of course, saffron-rice and vegetables).

By the way, a really good Paella you cannot make at an electric range, but on charcoal-fire in a flat pan of impressive diameter, called Paellera. After all the ingredients have been added you cannot stir it around anymore. Only artists of cuisine neither burn the dish nor serve it crude - but then results are overwhelming.

Fideuá is similar to Paella, but the rice is replaced by a particular kind of noodles. Another speciality is Arroz Negre, "Black Rice", which debts its color to the ink of cuttlefish.

If you need a refreshment somewhen, try a drink called Horchata. It is made of the milk of a plant called Chufas (somewhat similar to rice) and is served ice cold.

Recommended Restaurants in Valencia

Valencia has more than 2,000 bars and restaurants, and if you work at it, you can hit more than a handful of the best.
A typical night begins about 10 p.m. with a stop at a tapas bar, inevitably the first of several. Sample Iberico ham, tiny deep-fried green peppers, potato omelet, garlic shrimp, grilled baby squid. Eat, listen to music, then move on, ending the evening, if you're lucky, at Cafe Sant Jaume. From the terrace you can watch the girls flaunt their sexy clothes and the boys ogle the girls, feel the breezes, inhale flowery perfumes spiced with scent of a far-off cigar, and wonder why you don't just live in Spain after all.

• La Pepica Restaurant, at the beach near the port.
• Cafe Sant Jaume, Caballeros, 51, in the old quarter.
• El Canyar, Segorbe, 5, in the city.
• Restaurante Submarino L'Oceanografic, City of Arts and Sciences.
• Horchateria "Daniel," Avenide de la Horchata, out of the city.

Rice served in these restaurants will have been grown in what might be called Valencia's suburbs; the paddies are that close. Thirty percent of Spain's rice is produced in the province of Valencia.

Diners can sip wine with lunch and dinner, drinking nothing but Valencian wines, all labeled with the designation of origin, and not make a dent in the available choices. More than 80 labels in Valencia offer excellent reds, whites and roses.

The hugely popular soft drink of Valencia is sweet, refreshing horchata. It looks like milk, and it pours like milk, but the white beverage is made from the crushings of the Tiger nut, sometimes called earth almonds, a fruit of Egyptian origin. The Valencia region is the only place in Spain where they are cultivated. Street vendors do boffo horchata business from their carts in the hot Valencian afternoons. But if tourists have a car, it's worth a drive to a horchateria, which will serve the drink plain and sweet or fancied up with ice cream. Locals like to dunk the locally famous pastry, fartons, into the horchata. The tubular sweet doughnut tastes like a Twinkie crossed with a Krispy Kreme.