Gastronomic Valencia - Food & art in south-east Spain

From market to plate there is nothing fresher or more vibrant than Valencian cuisine. The legendary huertas – market gardens, orange groves, paddy fields and Mediterranean orchards – are the city’s larder. Valencian markets are some of the most beautiful in the world; the Gothic silk market is a World Heritage Site.

The tour includes experiences such as a paella cooking demonstration in a family-run restaurant surrounded by rice fields, access to the fish auction at La Lonja in Dénia, and tasting unctuous goat’s milk cheeses dribbled with thyme honey in the mountains. There is hospitality at great bodegas like Casa los Frailes, source of wines served to visiting heads of state at Madrid’s Palacio Real. There are also low-key everyday experiences – a refreshing horchata, a tiger nut milk pick-you-up; an Aqua de Valencia, a fresh orange-based cocktail; and rifling the wine cellar, feasting on organic potatoes and nibbling at a perfectly burnt brandade at Casa Montaña, arguably the best bar in the world.

Valencian cuisine is both ancient and new. Wind-dried octopus prepared to a 3,000-year-old Phoenician recipe is a revelation, as is the sweet luxury of almond biscuit accompanied by an ice cold Moscatel. The Moors held the Levante for 400 years and the phantom flavours live on. We feel the weight of Borgia rule and the Naples connection, and taste history with alioli-steeped fideuà – Europe’s first pasta dish? 

There are Baroque splendours, shimmering Valencian tiles and the hedonistic sun-drenched canvases of Joaquín Sorolla. There are back streets and museums and hideaway cafés to be explored: the Jewish call, the Almohad Arab walls, the twelfth-century Christian settlement. Dénia’s museum contains artefacts from the Romans and the Iberians, who were pressing wine 5,000 years ago. The final lunch is provided by 3-star Michelin chef Quique Dacosta, a whirlwind of inventive brilliance, theatre and caprice.