I love paella in all its different varieties. I love it so much that it was the first thing I ever cooked for my son Lloyd’s date, who later would become his wife and our daughter-in-law. The paella I made that night was in the style of what is called Valencia, named for the city in Spain.
By the way, the proper pronunciation is “pa-ay-a” not “pa-ella.”
So, when I discovered La Paella around the corner from a friends house on the west side of Los Angeles many years ago, I was delighted.
La Paella has a full menu of hot tapas (17 varieties), cold tapas (14 of them), 4 soups, 5 salads, 5 fish and 5 meat dishes. But I can’t get passed the paella. I’ve been with others who have ordered other main courses. Not me.
The menu lists seven distinctly different preparations. I’ve tried four of them and settled on the Valencia as my favorite – saffron, meat (chicken leg and ham), vegetables, seafood and red peppers. The seafood almost always includes black mussels. There also will be a nice piece of salmon or some other kind of fish.
We always order it made with the bomba – the specialty rice from Spain. And we relish the crispy rice scraped from the bottom of the paella pan.
There’s a kick-in-the-head sangria, a selection of Spanish wines, and a nice assortment of beers.
