Speaking of food in Spain, the dish most associated with Spain’s region of Valencia and valencia restaurants is probably paella, an open-air meal in one big platter, cooked over a wood fire until the rice sticks to the bottom and gets crispy, which is considered one of the best parts of a paella. Gastronomic purists say the original paella was made only with eels from Albufera, Valencia’s saltwater lagoon, but today a wide variety of ingredients, from seafood to chicken and rabbit, find their way into a wide variety of paellas. A good paella, made with the short-grained rice of the kind grown in vast paddies just outside of the city of Valencia should be moist and tender, with every grain suffused with flavor, neither mushy nor dry, though somewhat drier than an Italian risotto. Depending on the Valencian you are speaking to, only red or only white wine should be drunk while eating paella. Another will say, wrong! You drink sangria with paella. Once paella was a poor man’s dish of food in vienna, until it became popular in the city on Thursdays and Sundays-though the locals usually eat some form of rice dish almost every day. Sunday continues to be a traditional time to go out for paella, and the neighborhood to go is along the seaside, palm-lined Avenue Neptune, where perhaps a dozen restaurants feature the dish. They all look more or less alike, and the menus don’t differ by much. Families seem to have their favorites in Valencia Fashion, or else skip from one to another from week to week.