Stopping at Restaurante Maremar for a restorative cola, we decided it looked so nice that we’d pop back for lunch a couple of hours later. We cycled in the opposite direction, down south to Playa de Pinedo, which felt like the quieter half of the Valencian coastline.

If you prefer your paella with seafood, you’ve got plenty of options along the beach too. Their paella Valenciana is a specialty, and comes according to the traditional recipe with garrofó (a large variety of butter bean), their green bean counterparts (like runner beans but larger), and plenty of aromatic rosemary and saffron. In El Cabanyal neighbourhood, La Pepica is one of these large, seaside-y places whose décor doesn’t look like it’s changed much since the ’80s and whose clientele have clearly been coming here for decades as well. That being said, we did cycle to the beach on more than one occasion to eat ours… La Pepica This seems a little unintuitive given that Valencia is right by the sea, but since the city is reputed to be the birthplace of paella I’m not going to argue. While many versions of paella are made with various seafood, Valencia’s very own version is made with meat: chicken and rabbit, to be precise. My brother is almost as much of a foodie as I am, so unsurprisingly our lunchtimes and evenings turn into a culinary tour of Valencia – tapas, paella, horchata and more… 20 Must-Try Food and Drinks in Valencia Restaurants, Bars and Markets So this foodie guide is very much a work in progress: during every trip, I eat in some new restaurants and re-visit some old favourites, tweaking my recommendations as the years go by. My brother lives in Valencia part-time, and I’ve visited him every year since he moved there (except of course in the dark days of 2020).

I’ve been lucky enough to go to Spain’s sunniest city, Valencia, four times in five years.

Foodies diner