Five days in Valencia – Tuula was there for a conference – gave us a really good insight into the city’s wonderful food culture. Food is so obviously central to the city’s life – there are even oranges represented in the stonework of the train station, indicating their historical significance.
We ate some great food, and I will post separately about two excellent restaurants – RiFF and Habitual. This post focuses on the food life of the city and some of the other places at which we ate.
The Central Market
The centre of Valencia’s food world is the Mercado Central, apparently one of the biggest markets in Europe. It was terrific. We had a first good nose around within a few hours of arriving – trying not be as annoying with my camera as the people we routinely curse in London’s markets!
The market is unusually spacious and two sights dominate: fruit and veg, particularly oranges and vibrant greens, and the meat traders all with dozens of cured hams hanging from their stalls. There are oils, spice stands groaning under the weight of vast sacks of various paprikas, nuts, plenty of wine, nougatine and other local sweets. The fish stalls are in a different area and showed an extraordinary array of fish and shellfish.
There are a few places to eat and drink, but these don’t get in the way – you pull up a stool at the bar to drink coffee or wine and enjoy pinxtos or something sweet. On our first visit, I ordered a piece of tortilla to take away, and was somewhat surprised to have it served in a substantial bread roll; it reminded me of a chip buttie! Fruit juices, especially orange, are available from many of the fruit and veg stalls, generally at €1 for a substantial glass.
Unlike, say, Borough Market, the bulk of the people in the market were locals doing their daily or weekly shop. They made a beeline for their preferred traders for their vegetables, ham, cheese and fish. That seemed to be a sign of how important food is to life in Valencia.
Eating Out
As well as the two higher-end places I will post about separately, we ate in several restaurants and did pretty well.
We had booked this restaurant for our first night on the basis of Trip Advisor recommendations and we weren’t disappointed. I am not sure whether it deserves its status at the very top of the ratings, but it was very good.
Sangria and a beer calmed us down after some difficulty getting ourselves oriented in the city. We followed up with a bottle of Les Alcusses, a Valencian red, more rustic and powerful at 15% than others we subsequently drank – and only €18! That started a pattern of exceptionally well-priced decent wines regardless of the quality or status of the restaurant.
Jamón Jamón offers what appears to be a typical tapas menu, but delivers the dishes with a twist that is contemporary and witty without being pretentious or detracting from the ingredients and the cooking. We had various interpretations of patatas bravas during our stay in Valencia, but none with quite the style of those in Jamón Jamón: a line of cylinders of potato – each more than a mouthful size – with the spicy sauce and aioli neatly atop each one. The taste was unmistakably patatas bravas, but the presentation was very different.
The assorted croquetas were a highlight – ham and cheese, black squid, morcilla and (possibly) chicken. They were excellent. Each was distinctly different and they gave us a range of interesting flavours.
A platter of ham and cheese was generous, as was a great green salad with chick peas – we were craving some greens when we arrived and demolished that plate. Chorizo in cider was exactly what it said. The only slight disappointment was the gambas, which promised much on the plate – big, gleaming, nicely-charred prawns – but were a little overcooked, leaving that sour, over-savoury note. We might have noticed this less earlier in the meal, but it was the final dish and after some other very good, precise and stimulating flavours, we left with this slightly less peasant taste in our mouths. That was a minor gripe after a tapas dinner that got us off to a good start. We would certainly recommend Jamón Jamón.
In Search of Paella
Naturally, we needed to eat paella. We reckoned our second day would be a good time, after a decent walk from our hotel, along the River Turia, now a wonderful urban park, through the City or Arts and Sciences and to the beach. By late afternoon we knew we would be ready for something to eat, and that there was a collection of restaurants, some of them apparently very good, lining the beach. Now, we also knew about opening hours in Spain and we always want to respect the local way of doing things. However, we assumed that the beach restaurants would be open all day. No! After a couple of late afternoon drinks in the marina built for the Americas Cup, we wandered to the beach to join the throngs of people enjoying the early Spring beach weather, but found most of the restaurants closed and not due to re-open until 8pm. Those open were more bars than restaurants, some of them very loud and not the sort of place we had in mind for our paella.
We found one place – it was big and looked OK, except that it was empty, which is surely never a good sign. As it turned out, it may well just have re-opened after the siesta, and by the time we left it was not far off full. But we ventured in with low expectations.
We needn’t have worried. We had a good Valencian paella with rabbit and chicken. The rabbit was lovely and juicy, although the chicken was slightly on the dry side. Overall, the flavours were lovely and we gobbled up almost every last grain – see photo!
Before the paella we shared a vast portion of calamari, which was fresh, cooked perfectly and had a much lighter batter than appearances suggested.
It seemed right to stick to Valencian wine with Valencian paella – a 2013 Venta del Puerto No.12 red. It was a step up in terms of refinement and balance from the previous night, and for that we paid the princely sum of a whole euro extra!
So, in the end we feasted well on paella in a restaurant that soon showed itself to be more popular than we thought.
Wine and Food Festival
While walking along the River Turia, we had come across Valencia’s annual wine and food festival. The next day, and with Tuula busy at her conference, I explored it with a friend whose wife was similarly conference-bound.
It turned out to be a real treat. €10 bought us ten vouchers to be exchanged for wines, beers or small tasting plates plus the glass and tapas dish from which to sample our tastings. The glass itself struck me as an element that set the festival apart from any similar event in the UK. This was an outdoor event, and yet the glass was a glass. Attendees could wander in and out of the festival and we saw plenty of people ambling happily and safely around the Turia park with their glasses in hand. There was something wholly more mature about this; maybe it would be abused in the UK, but it suggested that if you treat people with a degree of maturity it will work.
We stuck to beer tasting, and enjoyed seven pretty decent local craft or small brewery beers, served in c.250ml measures, plus a couple of small food tasters to help us on our way. A highly pleasant way to spend the afternoon, despite a bit of a crush under the covered areas when the rain was at its hardest.
Taberna El Clot
That evening, Tuula and I decided we would simply walk in somewhere and see how we fared; we had places booked for the next two nights, so this was the evening to take a chance. In some ways, this told us the most about the approach to food in Valencia.
We settled on Taberna El Clot, just off the main cathedral square – real tourist city. We were impressed that even in this context we were able to eat at a quality level that more than satisfied us.
Needless to say, we opted for patatas bravas and a mix of meat and veg croquetas, all of which were fine. The highlights, though, were two slightly less run of the mill dishes – cuttlefish with broad beans, and pickled cod and peppers, which was a great first dish because it stimulated the taste buds. There was a mistake with our order and we ended up with cod fritters rather than a platter of meats, but we stuck with what was delivered, which was an enormous portion. The wine was a very pleasant 2011 Ceremonia from another part of Spain, Utiel Requena.
Taberna El Clot was nothing particularly special, but it demonstrated that you can get very decent food without researching the options and even when a place seems to be catering primarily for the tourist trade.
We thoroughly enjoyed our food and drink experiences in Valencia. Having managed to take in most of the sights, it’s not necessarily a city to which we would return – except that I think we could happily return to experience more good food and drink.