La Taberna Española

Valencia attracts a lot of tourists, which is one of the problems of being attractive. When you live in a touristic city, you usually try to avoid tourist traps when eating out. However, from time to time it is pleasant to embrace tourism, to see how tourists fare in our city and pretend to be one.

When this urge strikes, I will don my silly hat, walk around looking at stuff and blunder into the areas where somebody thrusts a menu in my face and starts speaking to me in English.

This can be fun; you can let them go on and on and then claim to be Russian, or answer in adequate Spanish so as to make them realise they have been wasting their time.

Plaza de Maria Benlliure, despite its name, is a street, a pedestrian street that leads of Calle San Vicente. It has various restaurants aimed at tourists and employees armed with menus and welcoming smiles.

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After torturing them all, I finally opted for La Taberna Española, as it had the most enticing name, but more important, had three starters, all included, and I am a pig even when I’m not particularly hungry.

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The set menu at 14€ includes battered squid rings, spicy potatoes (bravas) and a salad, all of which was a meal in itself, but when you are on holiday, as I wasn’t, you have to stock up on supplies.

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For the main course you could choose between two types of paella, lamb chops, pork, swordfish or cuttlefish, and finally dessert or coffee and a drink, which is not at all bad for 14,99€.

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The employee who persuaded as to try it seemed to be a nice person, really interested in me and my personal history, although I did notice he showed similar empathy to others once we were seated and, to be honest, he never wrote as he said he would.