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Talking about the best paellas in Barcelona is a brown and daring thing to do. There are many restaurants where you can enjoy a good rice dish, unlike in other cities in the country, where rice (paella and/or substitutes) is made in any way you like rice with stuff, stuff with rice, that sings Camels-.
Therefore, what we call the best paellas in Barcelona (or rice dishes) are, in any case, our selection, and we do not dare to claim any scepter. Moreover, if you know a great paella, a good rice dish near your home or a beach bar near Barcelona where they make the best socarrat, just tell us, we will run to try it and add it to this list.
El Xiringo de la Barceloneta
Despite its name, El Xiringo is not a typical beach bar, but a restaurant located in the alleys of the barceloneta neighborhood. Their rice dishes are incredible, but so are their portions and the exemplary treatment of their employees. The place is small so you probably have to make a reservation.
📍 Carrer de Sant Carles, 23
The Salty Sea
Just when you thought that a street as touristy as Passeig de Joan de Borbó, where the big franchises coexist with the most classic-looking restaurants, could not offer you much, you discover gems like La Mar Salada. Their paella del senyoret is perhaps the one we recommend the most. And watch out for their Thai style mussels.
📍 Passeig de Joan de Borbó, 58, 59
7 Portes
A classic. Little more can be added. A place full of history and traditional recipes. A treat for at least once in your Barcelona life. Parellada rice, its hallmark, is a Senyoret rice (with peeled shrimp and seafood) with denomination of origin that has been tasted by many generations of illustrious and not so illustrious Barcelonians.
Its seats, all crowned with a plaque that reminds us which famous person once sat there (Che, Robert De Niro… you decide) are just a sample of the centuries of history that a place with almost 200 years of life accumulates.
📍 Passeig d’Isabel II, 14
Informal
Informal is the restaurant of Marc Gascons (we have already visited him and he told us about his bravas one of the best in the city) located in the Serras Hotel. A luxury that is paid as such, but the cuisine of Gascons, Michelin star by Els Tinars in Llagostera, never disappoints.
📍 Passeig de Colom, 9
Can Ros
Another mythical place in Barceloneta that overflows with locals and some well-placed tourists on weekends, with its wooden benches, its fried fish cartridges and its black rice with cockles. Faced with the exuberance of the great rice restaurants in the neighborhood, Can Ros is in a humble place that offers great cuisine. Fine and quality rice dishes, dry just enough and with a great product.
Oh, by the way, during the week they have a lunch menu that for less than 20 euros includes their fantastic rice dishes.
📍 Emília Llorca Martín, 7
Cruix
This restaurant, another contemporary classic, present in the Michelin Guide, seeks to take Mediterranean cuisine, that of a lifetime, a step further. Incredible quality cuisine from Michelin-starred chefs who now offer brutal and affordable food. His rice, like his dishes, are reversioned classics, the current one is of matured meat and picañan, and always come out with a thin layer of rice, as the canons dictate.
Your menu of the day for example, costs 16 euros, and its tasting menu 39, which makes it one of the best value for money in the city.
📍 Carrer d’Entença, 57
El Racó del Mariner
Formerly located in the fishing port, El Racó del Mariner had that air of a barracks that changed when they moved to the Forum. A great weekend plan, authentic.
📍 Port del Fòrum, Carrer de la Pau, Local P-0
Arume
This place, hidden in one of the streets of the Raval and installed in the building where Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was born, exudes charm with its air of a house converted into a restaurant and makes us satisfied that the legacy of the gourmet writer is in good hands.
They only have two rice dishes and here, and for us, the best, is the mellow duck and mushroom dish, although the Galician origin of the owners is evident in the Arume-style Galician seafood paella, which does not disappoint.
📍 Carrer d’En Botella, 11
El Racó de l’Agüir
📍 Carrer de Tamarit, 117
Su’s Paella
Being so close, it is strange that Barcelona has so few representatives of the authentic Valencian paella. The canonical one, the one with the batxoqueta and the rabbit. La Paella de Su is one of them. Susana, the owner, is Valencian, and her house is one of the few where each paella is started absolutely from scratch (no prepared broth or marked meat), so you have to order it as soon as you sit down to taste it an hour later.
Along the way you can try classic Valencian starters such as the Titaina or the esgarraet, and read the 15 commandments of the good paellero that appear on the menu, and that will tell us how an (authentic) Valencian eats an (authentic) Valencian paella.
📍 Avda. Diagonal 436
Martinez Terrace
A good part of eating paella is the views we have. Enjoying a rice dish is fine, but doing it with your feet sunk in the sand is something else. And although the rice dishes at Terraza Martínez are not eaten on the sand, they are eaten at one of the best viewpoints in the city, the Miramar, at Montjuic from there we will eat a rice while we reach the whole city with our eyes.The rice dishes are ordered full table and arrive in giant paellas that turn the meal into a party, and the restaurant has a formula of 59 euros that includes starters, paella and drink that is a real luxury.
Ctra. de Miramar, 38.
Menu 10 years (75€); Formula Martinez (59€); Average price (50-60€)
Maians House
Of the places that tastes bad to discover. At Casa Maians they manage to serve, in a narrow room in Barceloneta, a very inspired meal based on the experience of the chef and head waitress couple in the Balearic Islands.
Product of this experience is the Ibizan rice, which, contrary to what you might think, has no seafood, but meats and sobrasada, is served in broth, and has the forcefulness to raise any partygoer after two weekends on the island.
📍 C. de Sant Carles, 28
L’Estupendu
Not everything good is in Barcelona, fortunately, and many times (more and more, a local will tell you), it is worth going out of the city to discover the wonders hidden in its margins. L’Estupendu is a perfect example of this, a beach bar in Badalona authentic, overlooking the beach and at the antipodes of the expensive and bad beach bar that abounds in our places.
At Estupendu they make great rice dishes, such as a black one with razor clams and crab and a suquet, also great, recovering a seafood recipe that is sadly difficult to find in the usual seafood restaurants. For the rest, cheerful and tasty tapas, blue and white wooden decoration and, in general, everything you ask from a real beach bar.
📍C/ d’Eduard Maristany, 75, Badalona
Amàlia House
We already told you about Casa Amàlia because they do something that more restaurants in the city should do: they point out on each dish of their menu where the product they bought comes from. This restaurant is right next door to the Concepció market, and they buy their products there.
Here, in addition, they make good Catalan cuisine, and although they only have a couple of rice dishes, they nail them, with mountain flavors that they achieve by making paella of Iberian prey or another of rabbit at low temperature. A luxury site.
📍Ptge. del Mercat, 14, L’Eixample, 08009 Barcelona