food & drink

Rice in this city tends to arrive one of two ways: the seafront pan cooked for whoever walks past, or the old-guard arrosseria where the recipe hasn’t moved in forty years. CruiX found a third. Since November 2017 chef Miquel Pardo has run this small, brick-walled room on Carrer d’Entença, a short walk up from Plaça Espanya, and it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

Pardo grew up in Onda, in Castellón, and came up through serious kitchens: Jordi Cruz at Abac, Rafa Peña at Gresca, Albert Adrià out in Ibiza. Then he took over a former Galician bar and made it his own. What he runs is a tasting menu rather than an à la carte paella house – a procession of small, inventive plates that ends with a rice pan set in the middle of the table to share. The tapas are where he plays: Peking duck croquettes with a touch of mint, fuet nigiri, fish tacos under a black garlic mole.

Then the pan lands and the meal reorients around it. Pardo spreads the rice thin across a wide pan so more of it meets the fire, which is how every serving arrives with socarrat, the caramelized crust at the bottom that Valencians will argue about all afternoon. The lineup rotates: a classic Valencian paella, a baby squid black rice under aioli mousse, a rice with lágrima ibérica and eggplant. There’s reliably a vegan one too. Tasting menus start from around €45.

It’s a small room and it fills up, so plan ahead – and pace yourself through the tapas, because the pan is the part you came for.