Unless you are prepared to seek out a good version of this dish and pay for it, the best advice I can give you about sampling this seemingly quintessential Spanish dish is don't bother.

Just as over the decades I've heard plenty of Spaniards moan about how bad the food they ate in London was, I've heard just as many visitors to Spain complain about the awful paellas they've had there.

Spain has traditionally been perhaps Europe's greatest consumer of rice, yet until quite recently, few cook books outlined recipes for many rice dishes as it was a low-status food eaten by the poor.

Rice in Spanish is 'Arroz' and there are a legion of celebrated Arroz dishes from around the country which are superb and worth hunting out. Paella dishes make up a mere fraction of these.

Whilst every family in and around Valencia may have its own unique set of paella recipes, what constitutes these real paellas is actually quite limited as they are made within a rigid set of parameters. Whilst a paella takes its name from the circular paellera pan, not all Arroz dishes made in a paellera are paellas.

So what is a paella? It is hard to define as one needs to know what ingredients were obtainable and in season in the Valencia region, but there are only a few we recognise, so it's probably best to just list those.

Undisputed paella:
Made with chicken and rabbit, beans (artichokes in Spring) with variations including snails and chickpeas (in Southern Valencia)
This is the real Paella Valenciana. An excellent description in English in the second post here. (most of the subsequent posts aren't paellas)

Paella de Marisco:
Usually mussels, squid, cuttlefish, prawns, langoustines - there are also a couple of variations based on different kinds of lobster (like bogavante or langosta). Be very wary of any paella de marisco loaded with lots of vegetables, especially peas.

Paella de Pato:
In the swampy areas where rice is grown, ducks were more plentiful than rabbits, this paella is kind of similar to the Paella Valenciana but duck is used instead of rabbit.

Paella de Verduras:
Now I'm really stretching the definition of paella. This is a vegetarian dry rice dish made with vegetables from the region. Some Valencians accept this as a paella, some don't. This is the kind I myself make most often and I personally consider it to be Arroz de Verduras, especially as I make it with ingredients sourced in London and cook it indoors.

Paella Morena:
One final pull on the definition of paella
This is a favourite of mine and as far as you can stretch a paella before it becomes another fabulous regional speciality - Arroz a Banda. It's made with fish stock, cuttlefish and artichoke. It's also (along with the Paella de Verduras) the only kind of paella where onions are acceptable.

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Paellas are very much special occasion dishes and are rarely, if ever, served to order. You eat them when the paella is good and ready. A Spaniard will usually have to 'encargar' (order) one in advance and turn up with enough friends/family to make it worthwhile.

Foreign tourists to Valencia seem to expect to find paella on demand in the city centre. Spanish visitors know they have to make an effort and book tables at lunch time at one of the out of town restaurants that specialise in this dish. There are always coach loads of visitors who travel to these restaurants specially yet few are from English speaking countries.


There are a couple of restaurants within the city of Valencia that offer good paellas. It's best to book in advance, and accept that the experience won't be cheap, note also that they may need a minimum number of diners.

One of these is Chust Godoy.
Or you might like to try
Tinto y Oro - Calle de los Sogueros, 4 (on the corner of Calle de Ripalda), telephone 963153901 MAP
If you want Paella on the beach, at Playa Patacona there is La Ferradura another decent place to sample this speciality. MAP

On the outskirts of Valencia:
Restaurant Rossinyol in N�quera - carretera Valencia-Serra, Km 16 N�quera telephone; 961681007 MAP
Or there is L'Andana, Avda Juan XXIII, 69, telephone 962433939 MAP

Restaurante Paco Gandia in Pinosa (Alicante) - San Francisco, 2
Telephone 965 47 80 23 MAP
This place has been getting a lot of English language attention on the internet (such as this WSJ article where it gets raved about). The place seems to conform to pretty much everything I know and would expect to find in a great Arroceria but be warned that the price is particularly high, and from what I can tell from Spanish reviews, service is not so hospitable, and it's much better if you can get a group of at least ten people together - call them first to make sure they can accommodate one or two people and what options you'd have.
(I admit I feel quite ashamed that I took this sort of dining experience so much for granted as a child).

Outside of Valencia
Murcia - http://www.rinconhuertano.com/
Ibiza - http://www.hoteltorredelmar.com/
Tokyo - Ginza Espero

If you want to see a Spaniard shudder, tell them you went to Paellador for lunch. It is to Paella what McDonalds is to hamburgers.

You beat me to it! It's so important it bears repeating:

If you are in Spain and you see this logo in front of a restaurant: http://www.mundofranquicia.com/mfc/i...q/logo4490.gif

RUN, do not walk, away.

Especially outside of Valencia, you will see this crap served everywhere. It comes frozen in a bag and it is nasty. I don't think any Spaniards would ever eat the stuff but thousands of unsuspecting tourists fall victim every year. It isn't a restaurant chain, rather it's a brand of frozen food. They give out big colorful posters to the restaurants that buy it so they can trap unwary customers.

I'm not a fan of any paella myself, though sometimes you have to eat what's put in front of you.

Fideuà, on the other hand, I like. Probably because it's loaded up with all i oli.

Mmmm! That freshly defrosted taste and texture!

I'm not sure if Paellador actually have restaurants, it's a brand of pre-prepared paellas that mediocre restaurants can serve to their undemanding clients. Like having a list of Frigo ice-cream desserts. It just shows how bad paellas can be if restaurants feel it worthwhile to display the Paellador logo to entice their customers, obviously it ensures a degree of quality/consistency, just like a Big Mac does.

(EDIT TO ADD and alanw beat me to the explanation!)

I am off to Spain on Thursday and paella will be the first meal I have. Rarely am I disappointed.

Pamplona in NY makes a superb paella. The chef is a former assistant of David Bouley and spent 6 months training at El Bulli. The restaurant is excellent overall and the paella one of the better dishes.

I've never eaten more than one or two good paellas in a year, even when I lived in Spain. The best were made by my family at big reunions in countryside fincas with chickens and rabbits I would have been making friends with in the morning. Times have changed and I still haven't had the opportunity to win over my husband yet... but it will happen.

You might like Arroz a Banda, this comes with all i oli and you can dab as much on it as you like.

I assume you"ll be arriving early enough in the day to make it for lunch (paella for dinner is a big no-no)

Have you been to Spain a few times before? If so:
Are you very undemanding?
Extremely lucky?
Have a great list of restaurants that specialise in paella that you are working through? And if so, how about sharing some of those recs here?

Great thread.
Any great paella restaurants in the San Francisco bay area?
My sister-in-law is from Las Canarias and she taught me to make a fairly good home paella.
Maybe somebody cares to post a recipe or a link to a good paella recipe.

The link I gave in the Paella Valenciana description has a typical recipe.
The part that always made the matriarchs (and occasionally the patriarchs) in my family go into dispute with each other involved ñoras and other seasonings. (ñoras are typical of the Alicantinian version of this dish).

Assuming you won't be using the snails (you pick them off Rosemary bushes, starve them for a week and then there's all the business with washing them and tricking them out of their shells) follow Rogelio from egullet's recipe and use the following quantities (for 4 people)

Bomba rice, about 300gms (put this in a cup - you'll need four times this amount in water)
Chicken - 750 gms.
Rabbit - 350 gms.
Grated very ripe tomato - 5 large spoonfuls (an Alicantinian way is to halve it and let it cook along with the meat face down)
Ferraura green beans - 400 gms
Garrofo beans - 80 gms
Saffron - 1/3 gram threads, toasted for about 30 seconds then ground/milled, or one teaspoon powdered colourant (not everyone in Valencia uses or even likes saffron)
Sea Salt (to taste, but no more than 4 level teaspoons on your first run)
pimenton/paprika or smoked paprika (be sparing with this) or freshly ground ñora to taste
small branch of rosemary (lay on top whilst cooking and remove before serving)

The best taste is when it is cooked on an orange wood fire, a little smoked paprika will give a hint of that 'cooked on a bonfire' flavour.

There are no set ratios, so feel free to tweak and adjust to your liking. This is just a guide to get you started.

I love paella and make it as often as I can at home. I tend to make Paella de Mariscos but haven't had any luck finding cigalas in the US. I don't even know the name of them in English but they are like a cross between langostines and shrimp.

You can get Bomba rice online at tienda. They also have all the smoked paprika and other goodies.

Cigalas are in fact dublin bay prawns,a cross between a langostine and a shrimp ,and look like a crayfish but with much longer claws.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/glossary/d...blin_bay_prawn

Virtually all cigalas served in Spain are caught in the British Isles (mainly Scotland) and shipped frozen to Spain (passing trucks carrying fruit & veg coming the other way).Their main benefit to paella is to add flavour-there is no claw meat and the edible body is tiny compared to the overall size.
Go to any coastal town at weekends in Spain and the restaurants are full of Spanish (or Catalan) at 3pm tucking into plates of freshly prepared Paella.

i'd vouch that this place has a good paella. i was there in 9/07 and it was a fabulous meal.
i do agree that it's weird to find paella at just about any restaurant. i recall walking down the la rambla in barcelona and seeing paella served at chinese restaurants...

having said that, i think cafe iberico and other tapas restaurants in chicago do a decent replication of paella, but for a true experience, i have yet to experience anything better than amada's in philly.

Everyone seems really intent on believing that a classic paella has seafood in it and that it's something you eat when you're on the coast.



To recap:

Paella Valenciana is made with chicken and rabbit - it has no fish or shellfish. There are other kinds of paellas (and I've described them), but these are more like aberrations than the norm.

It would not surprise me to see Spaniards and Catalans eating some version of paella de marisco at a coastal town - the majority of Valencians don't usually eat paella anywhere near a beach. It's a dish we associate mainly with 'el campo' (the countryside/grazing lands).

I've eaten a few paellas de marisco at restaurants, I have never been blown away by any of them*. However, a true Paella Valenciana I consider to be one of the world's great culinary creations.

As Silverswimmer has pointed out, cigalas are not from the Meditarranean. In fact, very few shellfish eaten in Spain is from local waters nowadays. And what is commands atronomically high prices (like the red prawns - a speciality of nearby Denia).
Not so long ago, shellfish was cheap and abundant and easily accessible locally. This isn't the case anymore.

But I fight a losing battle trying to get non-Valencians/Murcians to understand. I've seen a program where Gordon Ramsey tries to turn around the fortunes of a Restaurant near Malaga (la parra) and makes something he asserts is a genuine, authentic paella. It includes chorizo and mixes chicken and shellfish and he added sherry to it. Enough to make me explete a few F words of my own.


*I'd recommend that you forget about eating Paella de Marisco in Spain and find somewhere you can enjoy a great Arroz a Banda instead.

And be prepared to wait, and wait and wait for a good paella to be cooked once you have ordered it. If it comes to your table in less than 30 minutes, it's been frozen, thawed and reheated.