Valencia Food and Travel Guide: Authentic Paella, Horchata and Fideuà

Valencia, on Spain's Mediterranean coast, is the birthplace of paella, and locals are fiercely protective of how it should be made. Forget the touristy seafood-and-chorizo versions: the authentic paella valenciana is built on rice, rabbit, chicken, white beans and snails, cooked over an open flame until the bottom forms a prized crust called the socarrat.

What to eat

• Paella valenciana — the original, with rabbit, chicken and beans, never chorizo.
• Fideuà — paella's cousin made with short noodles instead of rice, usually with seafood.
• Horchata de chufa — a sweet, milky drink made from tiger nuts, served ice-cold.
• Fartons — soft, glazed pastries made for dipping into horchata.
• Esgarraet — roasted red pepper and salt cod salad, a simple Valencian starter.

Where to go

Begin at the Mercat Central, one of Europe's largest covered markets, a modernist hall piled with produce, seafood and jamón. For a meal, the leafy Ruzafa neighborhood mixes traditional rice restaurants with a younger, design-minded crowd. For paella with sea views, locals head to the beachfront restaurants of El Cabanyal and La Malvarrosa.

A practical ordering tip: real paella is a lunch dish, cooked to order for two or more people, so expect to wait 20 to 30 minutes, and be wary of any place displaying pre-made pans of bright yellow paella in the window.

Good to know: away from the beachfront tourist strip, Valencia's rice houses and horchaterías often write their menus in Spanish or Valencian only, so photographing the menu to translate it helps you tell the rice dishes apart and order the genuine article.

When to go

March to June and September to October are the best months, with warm sea, long light and none of the August heat. The single biggest date in the calendar is Las Fallas in March, when enormous satirical sculptures fill the streets for a week and are burned on the night of the 19th — spectacular, extremely loud, and booked out months ahead. July and August are hot and busy on the beaches, and winter is mild enough that the terraces stay open, which makes Valencia unusually pleasant off-season.

How the eating day works

Valencia keeps Spanish hours, and paella is the reason to respect them. Lunch runs from roughly 14:00 to 16:00 and is the main meal; dinner rarely starts before 21:00. Real rice dishes are cooked to order for a minimum of two people and take half an hour, so they belong to lunch — a restaurant pushing paella every evening is aiming at visitors. The menú del día on weekdays remains the best value in the city.

Three habits mark you as paying attention: order arroz dishes by name rather than saying "paella" generically, ask for the socarrat if you want the crust, and take horchata with fartons in the late afternoon rather than as a dessert.

Getting around and what it costs

The historic centre is flat, compact and easy to walk, and the Turia gardens — a former riverbed turned into a nine-kilometre park — make cycling the natural way to cross the city, with bike hire and a public share scheme everywhere. Metro and trams reach the beaches and the airport. Prices are noticeably lower than Barcelona or Madrid: a rice dish per person, a glass of local wine and a coffee still lands well under what the same meal costs on the coast further north. Tipping is minimal, and terrace seating costs more than the same drink at the bar.

Sit down, order the real paella, and savor the dish exactly where it was born.