"Paella is surely the best-known dish of Spanish cuisine in the world. And throughout Spain you will find it on the menus of practically all regions." At least, that's what the thousands of readers of one of the most consulted guides by British travelers who travel to Spain believe. Which daily gives rise to the culinary misunderstanding that most shocks foreign tourists who visit Alicante, not only the British, because it was a Basque who asked the undersigned chronicler in surprise: "Is there no paella in a Valencian city?"
Well no. And it happens in a city that boasts of cooking the best rice in the world, prepared - of course - in the container that shares a name with the recipe that Valencians so jealously and ardently defend. There is no high-level restaurant in Alicante - with the exception of those dedicated to foreign cuisines - that does not include rice among its specialties. But, to the bewilderment of many visitors who search without success for the magic word on the menus of the most renowned restaurants, none of them dare to offer "paella."
An influencer from Alicante, Elena Vidal, walked through Alicante last Thursday, taking advantage of the massive influx of tourists, carrying a sign with the message in Spanglish "don't ask for paella, ask for rice" (don't ask for paella, ask for rice) following the line of a popular street graffiti that was all the rage a few months ago.
Is this campaign justified? Is there such confusion? The truth is that yes. The confusion reaches the point that when searching on the Internet, as most travelers do, "the best paellas in Alicante", on the most successful pages - such as TripAdvisor or the specialized The Fork - a list appears that stands out and mixes the most classic establishments with several "rice shops" and some new ones, the ones that are successful among gourmets who want to be up to date.
The veterans Nou Manolín or Dársena offer fifteen rice dishes; the busy Daksa, reaches nineteen, while its "neighbor" in Playa de San Juan, the unquestionable Casa Julio, is limited to eleven, with coastal classics (monkfish, clams and shrimp; black; senyoret) and interior (rabbit and snails; lean and vegetables). O'Donnel's Chaflán, recently opened and a brilliant success, triumphs with eight recipes among which there is no shortage of the very traditional a banda but there are other less common options such as baked rice with Tàrbena and tomato sobrasada or the mellow tuna red and artichokes. In none of them is it possible to eat paella.
And look, the variety is, at times, astonishing. The Estiu rice restaurant, highly rated by its customers, has in its daring menu combinations that guarantee the purist's syncope: rice with octopus and kiwi or rice with pig's trotters and raspberry, to highlight a couple of them. And it also appears in the famous "paella" lists intended to guide the traveler.
But, hey, the tourist will ask. In all these restaurants where I have eaten so well, haven't I eaten paella? Is this a merely terminological difference? Do Alicante residents feel an aversion to the word? In reality, what happens is that these rice dishes cooked in paella contain diverse ingredients and the technique of their preparation differs from the traditional Valencian formula. Until a few years ago, the simplest and probably most commercial resource was to give the paella a "last name": "mixed, seafood...", but the highest-class hoteliers were the first to renounce a practice that today only survives in some less scrupulous places.
