Valencia has one rule for paella: it is a Valencian dish, made with rabbit and chicken, flat green beans and garrofó, cooked over orange-wood fire in the countryside. The seafood paella, the mixed paella, the paella with chorizo — these are adaptations, tolerated but not endorsed. If you want to eat the real thing, take the thirty-minute drive to a restaurant in the huerta villages on the edge of the Albufera lagoon, order the traditional version, and eat it at lunchtime when the socarrat is at its best.
In the city itself, the Mercado Central is one of the most beautiful food markets in Europe — a Modernista iron-and-glass cathedral to produce. The Ruzafa neighbourhood has the city’s best contemporary restaurants and coffee. And for horchata and fartons at any hour, the traditional horchatería de Santa Catalina in the old quarter is the only address that matters.