I've been to Salty's and tried the stuff in that bin... it tastes sort of like a Mexican risotto. Not paella at all.

I had great paella at a little dive restaurant in Munich near the English Garden once. My wife and I joke that the two best meals we ever had in Munich were Spanish / paella... and Indian.

Now you've made me feel really ill...

I've just learned that this frozen muck is available in 180 restaurants with the brand expanding exponentially. People are obviously hoovering it up

(I'm rather partial to Taco Bell also, but, like you, I don't kid myself that I'm eating Mexican food.)

It's kind of like enjoying Cava or Asti Spumante or Lambrusco or any other kind of sparkling wine. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of them, just don't go calling them 'Champagne' - it shows you up and annoys those from the Champagne region.
Amongst my English speaking family the difference is very clear - there's 'paella' (where the 'll' is pronounced as a 'y') and then there are most of the dishes described in this thread which are 'paela' - and for the vile Paellador type frozen stuff we reserve 'pie-ela'.
A nice easy distinction.

For the worst of the pie-ela dishes I nominate dehydrated "Vesta Paella"
http://www.britishfooddirect.com/ind...oducts_id=2498
(perhaps not so unbelievably, this product gets a lot of positive reviews when googled)

The best paella I had once in a tiny Spanish bodegas in Andalusia, and such a good paella, I have since then had no more.

Best Paella i had was homemade in south Spain.

The secret is in fresh seafood, and a seafod stock.

I'll try Paella at practically any restaurant it is available. I only modify my rule when in Spain, as there are too many places that serve it, and too much other great food to try.

Probably the best I've ever had was at a random seaside restaurant we sat down at in Nice. Second best was a batch that I whipped up myself, about fifteen years ago. While I've used the same recipe a few times since, and it was good, for some reason I've not been able to recreate that orgasmic experience. I think the difference was in the heavenly batch I was using a well seasoned wok over a gas flame, and since then all batches were in an aluminum or case iron pan. When I moved to my current house the wok became unusable, as I went to an inductive cooktop. Eventually I had to throw it out, as lack of use and regular oiling caused it to rust.

Super wok, RIP.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-3/10.2.012; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1; en-us) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) WicKed/7.1.12344)

amen.....

I'm glad you had such a delicious rice/arroz dish.

But calling this orgasmic wok cooked experience 'paella' is as ridiculous as calling chicken served on a ceramic plate "chicken in a basket".

Seriously, why are all these wonderful 'arrozes' being called paella???

It's like seeing a sashimi thread with loads of comments about the fabulous carpaccio and ceviche or sushi and donburi people have had (but where everyone is convinced they are eating authentic sashimi).

So one of the criteria to be acceptable paella is it must be made in a traditional paella pan? Assuming the recipe is exactly the same using a wok and a proper pan, plus tastes similar, the wok batch can never be properly called paella?

The design of the wok somehow allowed for crusty rice as well as any paella I've ever had (just because the pan is designated a "wok", it doesn't mean I mixed the dish like preparing a stir-fry). A thin layer of slightly burnt crust is mandatory in my scoring system, in order to be considered a success.

Frankly I've had some pretty mediocre paella in Spain. Just wander into the cafeteria at at big box store like Alcampo. Their "paella of the day" for 6 or 7 Euros is served out of a giant paella pan. It might not meet either of our criteria for being acceptable taste-wise, but the basic ingredients and cooking technique is all there.

Ive been thinking of the paella that i had last year in Madrid and Barcelona. My mouth has been watering since. I am looking forward to my trip to Vegas in September. Staying at the RIO and was checking up on their restaurants and buffets and it mentioned that the Carnival Buffet has paella, im HOPING that its somewhat good just to help my craving...

This will give LapLap conniptions but I've been enjoying the boil-in-bag "paella" marketed by Casino in Paris (my conditions are a little primitive). To me the rice has a nice texture and flavor, though I would never claim authenticity--it does include chorizo. I have never tasted an authentic paella but look forward to it eagerly.

like cassoulet?

I don't know enough about cassoulet to comment, but it seems a fair comparison.

What I did have in mind is 'dolsot bibimbap'.

I can put rice into a Korean heated stone pot (dolsot) and eat it from there and it will have a delicious brown crust. But that doesn't make it 'socarrat'.

Even if you don't read Spanish, this page shows a guide for the optimum size of paella pan to cook a particular serving size with:
http://www.lapaella.net/el-recipiente.aspx

A paella cannot be made more than a certain even thickness deep. Whatever it is that is coming out of a wok, no matter how nice it is, cannot be paella.
And, I would have thought it goes without saying that not all rice cooked in a paella is paella, even if a Zaragoza based supermarket charges 7Euros for it and calls it as such. If you haven't seen it already, I created a thread warning people that most of the so-called 'paella' any visitor would come across in Spain is mediocre or crap.

Ok, any current recommendations on where *outside spain* to sample an authentic paella? Names of restaurants, please!

(I'm particularly interested in Paris and NYC)

Socarrat is excellent:
259 W 19th St
New York, NY 10011-4019
(212) 462-1000

They were also in the RN dining program which allowed you to earn miles, but they seem to have left. Let's hope they come back again.

They also do a vegetarian paella using vegetarian stock and seasonal vegetables, which is delightful.

Delightful it may be; paella it is not.