Best Tapas in Valencia

It isn’t very often that I use the words “best meal I’ve ever had”. Especially since travelling, which deeply hurts my soul. 

I think part of it is 1) that we cook such delicious homemade food that my expectations are very high when we go out and 2) we find ourselves eating out more often than most, out of necessity.

We often find ourselves at hostels with no kitchens (or terrible kitchens that we don’t want to step foot in) or we’ll arrive early or late to our new destination, with no food in our bellies and no cooking supplies. Hence why we tend to eat out. A lot.

But as we don’t have a never-ending budget (oh how I wish we did), we can’t always splurge on the best food. And so, we find ourselves often disappointed with the food presented to us.

That all changed once we got to Valencia and I followed a recommendation from Chowhound about a great little tapas joint which is frequented by locals – Lloc de Tapes. I realise that the statement “best tapas in Valencia” is a lofty one, but having left Madrid feeling a little uninspired by the tapas I ate there, I feel this claim is justified on my part.

It was raining the night we visited and it took us a long walk to find the restaurant, but when we did, we entered to find only one other table seated and eating. We were really surprised and almost worried, as we figured if the place was as good as we’d heard, surely it would be busier?

The menu descriptions told us that the food should be good, but again, there is always a shadow of doubt. We ordered a couple of glasses of red wine and ordered three dishes to share.

When the first one came out, we realised that this wasn’t your ordinary tapas restaurant as the portions were much bigger (we weren’t complaining!).

First out came the cod and sauteed garlic prawns in a sweet red pepper sauce. The cod literally fell apart on the fork, was tender and fleshy and perfectly cooked. The prawns were firm and juicy and the sauce was not overly sweet but complemented the fish perfectly.

Next out came the potatoes cooked with ham and egg yolk (a dish we had seen the other table eating and knew we had to have). Again, the potatoes were perfectly cooked – almost like a buttery dauphinoise on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside – topped with crispy pieces of salted ham and a cooked egg yolk. When the egg yolk was split and ran over the potatoes, it gave a great silky texture to the dish.

Lastly of our savoury dishes was the braised beef cheek. Unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember what the sauce was that accompanied it, but needless to say the beef was tender and again, fell away as soon as your fork touched it. This was a smaller portion than the other two dishes, but we didn’t mind as we were already getting full.

So full, in fact, that we were going to skip dessert (unusual for me), but we just couldn’t resist taking a peek at what they had on offer on the menu. We ended up deciding to share a slice of the homemade cheesecake and I am SO glad we did.

The cheesecake was unlike many overly-sweet cheesecakes you tend to get in restaurants and instead had a savoury aftertaste, displaying the obvious use of “real” cheese in the cake as opposed to cream cheese. It was sweet, but not overly so – the only way I could describe it was that it possessed a texture more like an egg custard tart. One of the best restaurant desserts I’ve ever had in my life.

The bill came and the price was so low for the quality of food that we were almost giddy with the craziness of it. We left with huge smiles on our faces and a generous tip on the table for the friendly and patient waiter who  managed to help us order our food and wine despite a language barrier between us all.