Where To Find The Best Paella In Spain

It is very likely that you've never had paella — at least not paella in the sense that the good people of the southeastern Spanish seaside capital of Valencia (pictured below) and the surrounding countryside, who invented it in the first place, would define it.

Los Angeles Times even once ran one for a quick-and-easy version made with leftover turkey, canned chopped clams, pepperoni, and Spanish rice mix — cooked in a microwave, of course. (Photo: Flickr/C.Y.R.I.L.)

Paella valenciana — the real thing — is one of the great rice dishes of the world, as honest and straightforward, and as definitive of the culture that created it, as  a classic risotto milanese or a Korean bibimbop. Even in Spain itself, it is often misunderstood, badly cooked, and/or needlessly overladen with ingredients. The paella I'm talking about is not a baking dish full of yellow rice loaded with shrimp, clams, mussels, sausage, pork loin, chicken, peas, red peppers, and a few other things. It includes no seafood at all, in fact. In its purest, most authentic form, it is made with chicken, but the other usual ingredients are just rabbit, three kinds of beans (white beans, like the Italian cannellini; broad green beans; and garrofons, which are like butter beans), and sometimes snails, enhanced with a bit of onion and tomato and frequently but not always flavored with saffron. Aficionados will tell you that it's okay to sprinkle in some fresh rosemary, too, but only if you're not using snails — because the snails that would end up in paella are plucked from the fields, where rosemary would have been part of their diet, so they'd be bringing their own.

The rice used for paella, of course, must be a Valencian variety. Bomba is the best-known kind, but I know paella cooks who think it absorbs liquid too quickly and who prefer other local cultivars like fonsa or gleva. And note that there are two kinds of bomba, that from Valencia and that from Calasparra, in Murcia, to the south. A Valencian would no sooner use Murcian rice than a Bostonian would put tomatoes in his clam chowder. The cooking medium for the rice is plain water. Valencians will tell you, in fact, that only water from their aquifiers has precisely the right mineral content to produce perfect paella.

Some other rules for paella valenciana, at least in Valencia: It must be cooked over a hot wood fire, often of dried vine cuttings. (The smoke actually faintly flavors the rice.) Even though it uses short-grain rice like risotto does, and though risotto must be stirred constantly, paella is never stirred once the ingredients are assembled. It is never eaten hot, but allowed to sit for at least 30 or 40 minutes and often let cool to room temperature. And, at least in its home region, it is eaten only for lunch, never dinner, the theory being that it's entirely too rich a dish for an evening meal.

Paella-lovers will argue endlessly about where to find the best example of the dish, but my vote would go to a little place called Restaurante Levante, in Benisanó, 15 miles or so northwest of Valencia. Here, you will find paella valenciana made according to all the rules and strictures mentioned above, by Rafael Vidal, who was once named Mejor Paellero, or best paella maker, for the entire Valencia region, and who has cooked paella for the King of Spain.

I discovered the restaurant almost 30 years ago, on the recommendation of a friend. In those days, it looked like a slightly dingy working-man's bar with an only marginally cheerier back dining room. The paella, absolutely traditional, sat on a table in the hall, partially covered by a large dish towel. These days, the place looks bright and neat, almost contemporary, and the paella is backstage.

The menu when I first visited offered only one paella and a handful of appetizers and desserts. The choice of first and last courses is still small (baby cuttlefish with favas or shredded salt cod with garlic and red peppers are among the former; the latter include tarts of almonds and of ricotta-like cheese), but the paella menu has been expanded to include a vegetable paella; an arroz caldoso, or soupy rice made with the same ingredients as paella valenciana; and fideuà, which is basically paella made with short pasta pieces instead of rice.

It's paella valenciana itself that draws me to Restaurante Levante, though. Vidal's paella (below) is earthy and hearty. The saffron-rich rice is slightly softer than al dente, except for the bottom crust, the

socarrat, which is nutty, dark brown, and pleasantly chewy. The rabbit and chicken, small pieces of both, still on the bone, are full of flavor. (Vidal doesn't usually add snails.) The vegetables seem to melt into the rice. Eating it, I'm reminded of something Paul Prudhomme once said about Cajun food, to the effect that every biteful tasted a little different. And every different biteful is just plain delicious. (Photo courtesy of Restaurante Levante)

(If you don't plan a trip to Valencia any time soon, you still have a chance to taste Vidal's paella: José Andrés imports him every year to cook at his Jaleo paella festivals in the Washington, DC area and in Las Vegas.)

Other places to try authentic paella valenciana in and around Valencia include:

Casa Roberto, Calle Maestro Gozalbo 19, Valencia, (34) 936 951 361 — A wide variety of rice dishes in an upscale setting.

La Matandeta, Carretera Alfafar-Saler, Km. 4, Alfafar, (34) 962 112 184 — Rustic paellas in an old farmhouse in the Albufera, the marshes where Valencian rice grows.

Le Pepica, Paseo Neptuno 6, (34) 963 710 366 — An local institution on the waterfront, around since the late 19th century (Hemingway used to eat here), with a contemporary-minded chef who nonetheless does paella the old-fashioned way.