We had just arrived in Valencia and wanted to have lunch, but hadn’t booked anything. It was almost 15:00 and I was a bit fearful that we would not be able to find anywhere to eat.
Then we walked past this place, which we had spotted the last time we were here, but didn’t have time to visit.
We were very pleasantly surprised that the staff saw no problem on us joining so late, also found us a quiet place to sit at the counter, and were perfectly fine to serve us the tasting menu, even if there was only one hour left until the kitchen closed.
We went to this restaurant last year, and we liked it so much and had such a good time, that when we were planning where to go in our next visit to Valencia, this was top of our list!
Things hadn’t changed much since the last time—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as we frequently say in software engineering circles… before changing our mind and rewriting the whole #$%^*&$ thing 😂.
Sometimes you go to places with lots of expectations, and get disappointed. Other times you go with no expectations, and you get pleasantly surprised.
In this case, I tried going with an open mind because this restaurant seemed to have good reviews, but they had also relocated to this location recently. So that tends to unsettle things a bit sometimes.
After my slightly-delayed-in-every-sense-but-not-enough-to-claim-compensation flight finally landed, things became a bit of a whirlwind and so my hopes for live blogging went away… so here we are!
We had a burger at Black Turtle, the “caloret burger”. The name of this burger is such an excellent example of Valencian sense of humour ?
Caloret burger
A former mayor once delivered a really confusing and bewildering speech when inaugurating the Fallas. “Caloret” was one of the most prominent words in this public performance, and it didn’t take long for people to start making fun of it (and also using it as inspiration to create all sorts of memes… and eventually a burger, of course! ?).
Here for you to watch:
El caloret!!
We also had a horchata. I had a “mixta”, which is 50% iced, 50% liquid horchata. The best!
We tried a place called Palao for dinner. The food was really yummy and the ingredients felt fresh and tasty! Good find (although there were lots of serious contestants in the same street, and we were agonising as to which one to choose).
Croquetas
These were so comforting and delicious ?
Lukewarm octopus stew
There was a touch of warm spice here, but not so much that you can’t cope with it if you’re Spanish AND not used to spices. Very tasty and serving it lukewarm was a great idea as it was the right temperature: too cold and you can’t taste the flavour; too hot and it becomes overpowering.
Calabrese salad
These tomatoes tasted wonderfully sweet and tomatoey! Not sour and dusty. Best tomatoes I’ve eaten in a long time…!
