Paella by the sea
Valencia guide · 4 min read
What goes into a real Valencian paella, which other rice dishes to order and why Passeig de Neptú is the street of rice restaurants.
Valencian paella
The traditional recipe has chicken and rabbit, flat green beans (ferraura), garrofó butter beans, tomato, paprika, saffron, olive oil, water and rice. No seafood, no chorizo. It is cooked in a wide, shallow pan so the rice stays loose with socarrat, the toasted crust at the bottom.
Other rice dishes
By the sea people also order arroz a banda (cooked in fish stock), arroz negro (with cuttlefish ink), arroz del senyoret (with everything peeled) and fideuà, made with thin noodles instead of rice.
Where and when
Passeig de Neptú and Las Arenas beach have been lined with rice restaurants for over a century; La Pepica, opened in 1898, is the best known. Here rice is a lunchtime dish, eaten slowly, and it is worth booking at weekends.
A tip from us
If you want to cook your own, every Perlamar kitchen is fully equipped and the Mercat del Cabanyal is a few minutes away. Ask us where to buy the ingredients and the pan.
Foto: 01 Paella Valenciana original · Jan Harenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
