We went to València last week and… it is definitely a place where you can eat well!
Big Zuu recently visited the city and surrounding area for his programme called “12 Dishes in 12 Hours”; he did a great job of tasting what the area has to offer, and here is our version, I suppose. Though we haven’t counted the number of dishes and this is more like a week… anyway, to the food!
First things first, we had to go to our local market in Russafa, to stock up on beautiful fruits, vegetables and deli items.
Very importantly, we caught the end of the citrus season and acquired three kilos of juicy clementines and the first of the Valencian spring strawberries!
We also decided to try a renovated bar called Amor Amargo in Russafa for a quick beer.
It was a weird time, too early for dinner and they seemed to be setting up still for the evening, but they put us on a table made out of barrels and then we were blasted with The Smiths over the speakers!
But perhaps the highlight was that they gave us vampire sweets (caramelos de Drácula) on the way out, a Spanish childhood treat!
The next day, we decided we needed a walk and a merienda, and just happened to find outselves at Valor for chocolate and churros… just happened, of course!
Going back to the theme of fruits, we were gifted a batch of Seville oranges (long story, but one of my mother’s friends has lots of fruit trees).
So what do you do if life gives you oranges? You make marmalade! We even borrowed some old jam jars from my mum and will send her back a couple of jars when we next see her.
The other thing we did when visiting my mum, was to have a lovely lunch at La Cuina. The chefs like to include Japanese flavours with regional produce, and the lunch was very relaxing and the food tasty.
We went back to several of our favourites on the trip, the first being the Bar La Pilareta, for tasty mussels, calamari, montaditos, patatas, and a nice glass of vermouth.
And of course, since the Tyris on Tap taproom is just around the corner from La Pilareta, what else to do but have a post-lunch beer! We even bumped into a bartender from one of our other favourite bars.
Another evening we booked in for El Almacén, one of our favourite places in Russafa for innovative cooking and great drinks. It is somewhere we come when we want to have fun and eat well. We may have drank a bit (and the dinner came after very dangerous home-made Agua de València by Devvers, and wine at ViveVino), and so we are a bit fuzzy on everthing we ate…
Slight diversion away from the food now! The next day we went to the CCCC to see the exhibitions and there was a fascinating show by Llorenç Barber. He builds soundscapes; one of them featured paellas and another involved people throwing dried chickpeas into pots.
After the museum we went to Habitual for lunch, and ate so much that we were (unusually) defeated by the rices on offer.
We ate even more than this over the week, so you will all just have to come and visit the region sometime and sample the foods for yourself, just like Big Zuu and us!