While doing something else entirely I met a lovely couple from Villalonga - Brig and Phil. Brig recommended L'Almassera to us, told us how to find it - not difficult, I think its the only restaurant in Castellonet - and told me we would not be disappointed. We were so taken by their enthusiasm that we went the very next day for lunch.
The restaurant is in an old olive press and is completely charming. It is what you would hope to find in an old building in an old village in Spain, the press has been retained and the restaurant is quaint and pleasing.
L'Almassera only opens on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the winter and does a weekend menu del dia for 12€ as well as a la carte.
There are loads of choices for the menu del dia - but we both could not resist the caldoso de conejo con patatas - a lovely rabbit stew in a tomato base with potatoes and delicious rabbit. Cooked to perfection, very tasty and just the thing for a cold but sunny day. Partner availed himself of secreto de lomo con salsa roquefort (pork steak in roquefort sauce) and I had albondigas de pollo (chicken meatballs) con salsa curry! Partner was very pleased with his pork dish served interestingly with chopped onion and pepper, homemade coleslaw and homemade crisps. My chicken meatballs were also delicious, served simply with rice. Nobody ordering a curry sauce in Spain should expect to get a spicy sauce. This sauce did have a hint of curry about it - in a korma sort of a way - but was lovely. The Spaniards just don't do curry, or spicy hot dishes at all. I knew that when I ordered and so was not disappointed.
For dessert, partner had vanilla ice cream and I had flan de turron. Turron is a sort of nougat and is widely eaten at Christmas in Spain. I have had turron ice cream before - and really liked it - but this was the first time I had ever heard of it as flan. Flan - known as creme caramel outside of Spain - is not my favourite dessert but the turron transformed it for me. The turron did make it heavier, but not so heavy that it was leaden, for me it gave substance to the flan.
Accompanied by a glass of excellent house white wine, and followed by a cortado, we liked it so much we have booked to go back to L'Almassera on Sunday - we only went last Saturday!
The above pictures were taken on our first visit. We went back on Sunday for lunch and it was very busy - clearly a favourite spot for local Spanish families! We were glad we had booked and booking on a Sunday is definitely advisable.
Our return visit reminded me of a couple of things I forgot to mention, the menu del dia does not - unusually - include wine, and this time we had a bottle of white instead of a glass each. It was an excellent Rueda Verdejo, well worth 9€ but more expensive than most house wines in this area.
The chef makes his own fresh pasta and indeed all of the dishes are freshly cooked. There is also a garden - but not as pretty as the restaurant!
On this occasion my starter was Alubias blancas con almejas - white beans with clams. Lovely, really just lovely. My main, Rabas - strips of Calamare in breadcrumbs was more ordinary.
All in all a nice place for a relaxing and very reasonably priced Sunday lunch, still only 32€ with the wine for 3 courses and coffee, with enough buzz to make you feel you are somewhere good. We came away relaxed and contented.
By now you must be thinking is there nowhere that is bad to eat around here - well, I wont be reviewing MacDonalds or Burger King but generally, taking into account what you pay, I haven't really had a bad experience so far. It must always be measured against what you pay - clearly I expect more for a 60€ dinner than I do for a menu del dia at 8,50€! I was not impressed at all with La Visteta in Barx but will be going there for a meal again sometime in the next month and will update the review I have already done.
You will have gathered that most of these reviews are about lunch - there are two reasons for this - I love to lunch, although I like dinner, I love to lunch - and also the value tends to be better, no matter which country. When in the UK, my partner and I ate in some of the best restaurants in London and elsewhere - but normally at lunchtime, when a cheaper menu will be available, and of course Spain takes that to a whole new level!!
In Gandia, we have also eaten at La Vila, Puturru de Foie, Alameda and Casa Sanchis. No bad reviews but it is my intention to eat in each of these again and do a proper review.
La Vila, we have eaten in twice - once a la carte in the evening and once their Menu Piceata in the evening, good value at 14€ per head, including a drink and coffee. The Menu Picaeta has 5 tapas and your choice of a tostada - like an open hot toasted sandwich, with a variety of toppings. This is a menu favoured by groups. My memory of the a la carte, nearly a year ago now, is that it was very good.
Puturru de Foie, I love. Two reasons, it has a garden which is an oasis away from busy Paseo Germanies which is where it is situated and the menu, eaten in the garden on sunny days, is great value at 10€, including dessert, coffee and a drink. A nice of glass of wine in a decent glass, and it feels like a luxurious occasion. There are more expensive lunch menus and the portions are more 'nouvelle Spain' than a bar menu del dia, but its tasty food, not mean portions and a great experience.
We stop by Alameda quite a lot on a Saturday lunchtime, where they will serve a tapa with your drink - we have never had the same one twice. We came here for New Year, as the town's celebrations are based at the Plaza del Prado, which is where Alameda is situated. The New Year Menu, which included - 5 courses, your New Year Party bag, wine and (for us anyway as it was one per table) a bottle of cava at midnight. The food was good, the atmosphere festive and then you go out and listen to the live music in the square.
Casa Sanchis is a tapas bar, mainly. The menu is in Valenciana, but if you cant make it out, the bar staff can tell you in Spanish. They have many of their tapas on the bar and last time I was there, we tried some very different tapas like blood and onions (which we have had before in the area) and a seaweedy thing with tiny, tiny prawns - I don't love the blood and onions - very strong and rich - and the prawn thing was very salty but good. Fortunately they also do a lot of very good, more recognizable tapas, so don't let those two dishes put you off.
I will do a brief review of Restarante Riff in Valencia shortly and then I hope to return to 'live' reviews.
I am now starting my round up of restaurants where I have eaten BEFORE I started my blog and the best place to start must be with Restaurant Telero. Telero has just recently been awarded a Certificate of Excellence by Tripadvisor and ranks the number one restaurant in Gandia.
My partner and I first went there with our friends from Villa Florencia and have been back another four times since - which is quite a lot in one year when there are so many other places to eat. My favourite dish at Telero is the Vieira Telero - Scallop Telero, scallop served in its shell with ginger and a garlic gratin. It is just sublime, full of flavour but the scallop is not overshadowed by the flavours.
I have had fish, the excellent Iberican Pork and a Fillet Steak and each main course has been extremely well executed, cooked to everyone's liking. We have been as a couple and with friends and the friendly atmosphere and low key ambience is suitable for either. I have not been over this summer but I understand they have some outside seating as well. Telero is well situated for that as it is up a very quiet street with a open area where there are another couple of bars, so there is always a low buzz.
Telero is not hard to find but if you don't know its there you could easily miss this hidden gem as it is tucked away around a quiet corner off Gandia's paseo. The restaurant is owned by a husband and wife team and the owners are friendly and welcoming, solicitous but not intrusive.
Telero is expensive by Spanish standards - but not any more so than other restaurants in Gandia and by British standards is extremely good value. A meal for two with wine and water is around €85.
If you are ever in Gandia, leaving without going to eat in Telero, is an opportunity wasted!
I have been to Barbacoa Bacarra a couple of times now. It was recommended to me by my then Spanish teacher, Neus, who is now wandering through Geneva perfecting her French. I hope that wasn't because my partner and I were proving to difficult to teach...she will probably be angry with me for not doing a simultaneous translation into Spanish.
Anyway, Barbacoa Bacarra is at Gandia Playa about a block back from the beach. It is an upstairs, outdoor barbecue restaurant, with a cool look, trendy but grown up and welcoming. Although the bar itself doesn't do cocktails, they can run to a mojito, and a very good mojito at that. We first went to dinner on a Tuesday night. The weather hadn't been great although it was the last week in August and so the restaurant was fairly quiet - but not empty, by any means. Monday to Thursday Bacarra do a fixed price dinner of 20€ and it is just fantastic value. For 40€ for two of us, we had a salad, two starters they pick - which in this case was the Chicken Coca - bbq tender chicken on bread base and figatell con foie - a faggot with liver. Both were delicious but the faggot was particularly good. It was preceded by a little amuse bouche , which to my shame I can't now remember (I wasn't taking notes, sorry!) but I know I liked it!!!!
For the main the choice was their Parillada de carne or Rape - Monkfish - from the main menu. We both plumped for the parillada and it was terrific and plentiful. Dessert was an Ice Cream Sundae, which I should not have eaten.....but did.
Coffee and a bottle of wine was included, as was toasted bread.
Clearly we liked it as we went back for dinner with two guests on Friday 13th. Nothing portentous about the date as this turned out to be the last weekend of the season and the restaurant was doing a fixed price meal - this time as it was the weekend a fin de semana menu for 25€. The amuse bouche was prawns wrapped in pastry with a sweet jam dip - very nice and the salad contained cured salmon. One of our guests was not a big salmon lover but the salmon was tender and sweet, and he liked it.
There was a choice of main courses - three meat and two fish. Two of us plumped for solomillo - fillet steak (for this money - insanely good value!!) and two for the magret del pato - duck breast. Both the steak and the duck was nicely cooked but this being a Spanish barbecue restaurant it is fair to say there was a lack of vegetables, although it did come with some mushrooms. The fixed dessert was a warm chocolate brownie with cream and ice-cream - which was sinful but excellent. I know this is one of Neus' favourite desserts, so I felt I had to try it on her behalf. Beautiful, chocolate and crunchy but soft. Fab.
Again, coffee, wine, water and toasted bread with garlic were all included and four of us had a great night out for 100€.
I would urge you to go, particularly while the weather is till warm in the evenings as it is a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere, with good service. Sadly, owever, Barbacoa Bacarra only opens from the Fiesta de San Juan in late June until the second weekend in September when the season finally ends. I can see it being somewhere we regularly go next summer!
Having covered my immediate area, I will now have to backtrack to all the restaurants I have visited so far - as it is a restaurant review blog the specific dates don't matter hugely - although places can change - but as I wasn't planning a blog at the time there won't be much detail!
However, this week I visited Els Senyorets in Gandia for a menu del dia. Els Senyorets is on the main Paseo in Gandia at the end furthest from the market. It has a few tables outside but inside is a nice bar and restaurant area. We ate in the restaurant which had a few people in it but was not busy. The welcome was friendly and the service good.
The menu del dia is €8.50 and consists of 3 courses, coffee, bread and a drink. I had a sauteed spinach dish for starters which was very good - loads of flavour and very tasty, and my lunch buddy had ensalada del dia, which was a light chicken salad with a sauce and which went down very well. We both had arroz del negro - rice blackened with squid ink and containing baby squid. It was served with a dollop of ali-oli and frankly it was delicious. I had a decent glass of house white wine and my buddy had a beer.
For dessert there were at least 5 choices and we both plumped for calatrava, a spanish bread pudding with a 'flan' type topping - I had never had it before and it was lovely and moist and had a rich caramel flavour offset by the base. Clearly home made and delicious.
Coffee to round off the meal and we were out of the restaurant a couple of hours after we went in, feeling we had just enjoyed an extremely good lunch at a bargain of €17.50 between us.
Interestingly, and a first as far as I have seen so far, Els Senyorets has a lighter, lower calorie lunch, which on Monday was one of the starters and one of the mains from the main menu - espinanca - spinach and pechuga a la plancha - chicken breast. This means that once my diet starts again (ugh!) I can eat there and feel positively virtuous about it!!!
I would definitely return for lunch or try it for dinner and even better on a Friday night they are currently doing everything for a euro - got to be one of the best value nights out in town!!
...a very good place to start.
I now live in La Drova, a hamlet just outside of Barx, which is a mountain village about 20 minutes from Gandia, which is a small city about an hour south of Valencia. Gandia also has a beach resort, Gandia Playa, which is one of the biggest Spanish beach resorts in Spain. The region is generally known as La Safor
I have lived here for a year and while I have always enjoyed Spanish food, I had no idea how good and what good value, Spanish restaurants and bars can be.
Having been here a year, I have eaten in a fair few in Gandia, in Barx and around and in Valencia. I now have a lunch buddy, Nigel and he has persuaded me to start a food blog so at least once a month we will try out a different restaurant in Gandia and report back to you. I will of course also do a retrospective, which will take some time! and mention other places where I happen to eat out.
I'm not a food connoisseur, but do like my food and enjoy good food, whether that is a menu del dia in the village or Restaurante Riff, a Michelin starred restaurant in Valencia, of which more later.
Spain is a land where food is very important to the people. The Valencian paella is much revered and argued over, and Gandia is home to Fidua, a seafood version of paella made with noodles instead of rice and served all over Valencia region. Every holiday or fiesta is marked with food. The Spaniards enjoy their beer and wine, but food is the main event and never would drink so much that it ruins their enjoyment of their meal. Tapas vary by area and sometimes by town and although basically Spanish food is the same all over Spain, the number of regional variations, or produce and dishes special to specific towns means it is also quite varied!
So enough of the introduction and I will start to cover some of the places I have eaten so far.
