Food guide

Valencian Cuisine: A Guide to the Dishes That Actually Matter

Far more than paella. And the paella is not what you think it is.

By the Hoy Aquí team · 6 min read

An authentic Valencian paella straight from the fire. Photo: Unsplash

If someone serves you paella with prawns and mussels in Valencia and tells you it is “authentic Valencian”, they are either misinformed or not being straight with you.

Real Valencian paella contains chicken, rabbit, green beans and garrofón (large white beans). No seafood. No peas. No chorizo. It is a rural, not coastal, recipe and has deep historical reasons. But paella is just the beginning of what Valencia has to offer.

Rice

A rice culture unlike anything else in Europe

The Arabs brought rice to Valencia more than a thousand years ago. The Valencians turned it into an art form. No other rice tradition in Europe comes close in variety, technique and cultural depth.

Paella valenciana

Chicken, rabbit, green beans, garrofón, tomato and saffron. Cooked in a wide flat pan over a wood fire. The original.

Arròs a banda

Rice cooked in an intensely flavoured fish stock, served without the fish. Eaten with alioli stirred in at the table. A fisherman's dish.

Arròs al forn

Oven-baked rice with ribs, black pudding, chickpeas, potato and tomato. An inland dish - substantial and unhurried.

Fideuà

Like paella but with thin pasta instead of rice. From Gandía. Eaten directly from the pan with alioli.

Arròs amb fesols i naps

Rice with white beans and turnips. The Valencian equivalent of a winter stew. On a cold day, the best thing on the menu.

Where to eat real paella: never on the seafront, never in a restaurant with photos of the dishes on the door. Look for neighbourhood restaurants in El Palmar (in the Albufera park) or local bars in Valencia where paella is Sunday lunch, not a tourist attraction.

The farmland

The vegetables that make Valencian daily menus special

Valencia has one of the most productive market gardens in Spain - and it shows up directly in the daily set menus at neighbourhood restaurants. Fresh, local, seasonal.

All i pebre - a stew of eel with garlic and paprika. The emblematic dish of the Albufera. Earthy, intense, unlike anything else. Espencat - roasted pepper and aubergine salad with salt cod. Simple, deeply flavoured and perfect in summer. Buñuelos de bacalao - salt cod fritters, essential during the March Fallas festival.

“The daily menu at an honest Valencian restaurant is the best way to taste what the region actually grows.”

Drinks and desserts

What you must try before you leave

Horchata de chufa - a cold, refreshing drink made from tiger nuts (a tuber grown in Alboraia, just north of Valencia). Nothing like the Mexican version. Served ice-cold with fartons - long sweet rolls for dipping. The best horchata is in the specialist shops in Alboraia, not from bar machines.

Agua de Valencia - a local cocktail of fresh orange juice, cava, vodka and gin. Tastes better than it sounds. Do not confuse it with orange juice even though it looks similar.

Where to eat

The mistake almost everyone makes

Tourists go to the seafront. Valencians go to Ruzafa, Benimaclet, El Cabanyal and El Carmen. It is not snobbery - it is that neighbourhood restaurants have more honest cooking, reasonable prices and menus that change with the seasons.

A neighbourhood restaurant's daily set menu in Valencia - between €13 and €16 - is the most direct way to eat what Valencia actually eats. No inflated à la carte prices, no English translation of every dish, no photo on the door.