La Forja

The area around Valencia’s port is full of all kinds of restaurants catering for all tastes and pockets.

Restaurants that serve an inexpensive daily menu for ordinary working people are often indistinguishable one from another, but La Forja, situated beside the Grao market in Calle Abastos, 5, stands out.

For one thing it’s not so common to be greeted by Led Zeppelin’s first album when you enter this kind of place, or by a Pink Floyd poster wishing you were here, which I was as it happens.

The walls are covered with old photos of the port and graffiti, some of which is in English. My favourite was “Obsessed is the word that lazy people use to name hardworkers”.

There is also the famous photo of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I don’t object to in the least.

The food is simple and very tasty, with three choices for first and second courses, including a Gazpacho Manchego, which you don’t find a lot in Valencia.

All very pleasant for 8.50€, including a dessert, which was probably very nice although my wife wolfed both, so I wouldn’t know.

The highlight was definitely when the cook wandered out to ask if we were having a good time, looking like a refugee from a Harry Potter movie, or Woodstock perhaps; which might explain the music.

Anyway, he seemed clean enough.

La Forja closes on Sundays.