croqueta de jamon - fritter of jamon serrano and local milk
Highlight of the night. Perfectly fried and crispy shell with a creamy and porky filling. I would like to try their mushroom and truffle croqueta next time.
boquerones y mantequilla - mind fish co. tuna and anchovy goat butter, herb roasted radish
calamares en su tinta - grilled local squid, caramelized onion salsa tinta, arròz negra crisp
squid was a little chewy, the sweet caramelized onion was good.
costillas de elote - grilled corn, sweet corn and saffron butter, manchego, lime salt, hot paprika
i liked this, the cob was cut into quarters length wise, so you eat this like ribs
La Paella on La Cienega/San Vicente makes a nice socarrat on their paellas - I asked for it the only time I’ve ordered paella, so I’m not sure if they just do it by default. One of their super friendly servers even helped us scrape it up once they saw we were at the bottom of the pan!
Overall, the paella (I think we got Valenciana Mixta?) was solid if pricey, given how reasonable the rest of their menu is. Although it scratched an itch that time, I usually just order a bunch of tapas.
Not on any of my 10+ visits to La Paella. The last legit socarrat sighting at a L.A. restaurant was Chef Perfecto Rocher’s Smoke.Oil.Salt. However, the Saturday paella at La Espanola, though served without socarrat, remains very, very good. I only go to La Paella for their tapas now.
That’s too bad! I had the paella during lunch hours, and they weren’t busy at the time so I wonder if that makes a difference, like they weren’t just rushing the paella out. Did you request socarrat when you ordered? Either way, sounds like they don’t do it by default.
Just returned on Friday from 2 weeks in Spain including 5 days in Valencia for the purposes of seeking out authentic paella and have a few thoughts. First, it really annoys me that no restaurant in LA carves jamon iberico correctly. It’s supposed to be hand carved in roughly small rectangular shapes and not put through a slicer.
Second, regarding paella…I had very very fond memories of the paella valenciana I had in Valencia 15 years ago so I was excited and nervous to try it again this time around. I wasn’t sure if it would live up to the memories I had from back then when I was just a young naive backpacker eating what I could afford. We hit up two legendary places in Valencia, Ristorante Levante and La Pepita. We went to Levante first to get the paella valenciana and it was amazing, HOWEVER, no soccarrat to be found. A little disappointing but didn’t care because it was delicious.
Next, we hit up La Pepita for the seafood paella. While it was beautiful, it was such a salt bomb that it was hard to finish. Shame because the flavors were good. I don’t necessarily think that the kitchen messed up but rather, we found the food in this part of spain to be overly salty in general, but this one in particular was really salty. Also, no soccarat to be found.
So yeah, maybe soccarat isn’t the end all for good paella if these two legendary paella shops cook theirs w/o it.
Where else did you visit? I love and miss Spain so much (we were there in may and our spanish friends are visiting us soon). will be going to the spot OP posted!
