Table Of Contents
Talking about the best paellas in Barcelona is a brown and a daring thing to do. There are many restaurants where you can enjoy a good rice, contrary to what happens in other cities of the country, where rice (paella and/or substitutes) is made in any way -rice with things, things with rice, that sings Camellos-.
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 arroz caldoso near your home or a chiringuito 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 in Barceloneta
Despite its name, El Xiringo is not a regular beachfront chiringuito but a restaurant located in the alleys of the Barceloneta neighborhood. Its rice dishes are incredible, but so are its portions and the exemplary treatment of its employees. The place is small so you probably have to make a reservation.
📍 Carrer de Sant Carles, 23
La Mar Salada
When you thought that a street as touristy as Passeig de Joan de Borbó, where big franchises coexist with more 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 lifelong recipes. A whim for at least once in your Barcelona life. The Parellada rice, its hallmark, is a Senyoret rice (with peeled shrimps and shellfish) with denomination of origin that many generations of illustrious and not so illustrious Barcelonians have tasted.
Its seats, all crowned with a plaque that recalls which famous person once sat there (Che, Robert De Niro… you decide) are just a sample of the centuries of history that accumulates a place with almost 200 years of life.
📍 Passeig d’Isabel II, 14
Informal
Informal is the restaurant of Marc Gascons (we already visited him and he told us about his bravas, one of the best in town) located in the Hotel Serras. A luxury that is paid as such, but the cuisine of Gascons, Michelin star for 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 large rice restaurants in the neighborhood, Can Ros is a humble place that offers great cuisine. Fine, quality rice dishes, just dry enough and with a great product.
Oh, by the way, during the week they have a lunch menu which 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, the one of a lifetime, a step further. Incredible quality cuisine from the hands of Michelin-starred chefs who now offer brutal and affordable food. Their rices, like their dishes, are reversioned classics, the current one is of matured meat and picañan, and they always come out with a fine layer of rice, as the canons dictate.
Its 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 be 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 mushrooms, although the Galician origin of the owners is evident in the Galician seafood paella Arume style, which does not disappoint.
📍 Carrer d’En Botella, 11
El Racó de l’Agüir
📍 Tamarit Street, 117
La Paella de Su
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 (without 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 a (real) Valencian eats a (real) Valencian paella.
📍 Diagonal Avenue 436
Martinez Terrace
A good part of eating a paella is in 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 in the sand, they are eaten in one of the best viewpoints in the city, the Miramar, in Montjuic, from where we will eat a rice dish while we reach the whole city with our eyes.The rice dishes are ordered at 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
One of those places that tastes bad to discover. In Casa Maians they manage to serve, in a narrow place in Barceloneta, a very inspired food based on the experience of the chef and head waitress in the Balearic Islands.
The 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 lift 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 Barcelonian 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 so much in our parts.
In the Estupendu they make great rice dishes, like a black one with razor clams and crab and a suquet also great, recovering a seafood recipe sadly difficult to see in the usual seafood restaurants. For the rest, cheerful and tasty tapas, blue and white wooden decoration and, in general, everything you ask for in a real chiringuito.
📍C / d’Eduard Maristany, 75, Badalona
Casa Amàlia
We already told you about Casa Amàlia because they do something that more restaurants in the city should do: point out in 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 produce right 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 of a place.
📍Ptge. del Mercat, 14, L’Eixample, 08009 Barcelona
Topik
We have made a complete chronicle of Topik, because we were flipped. But we also add it to this list because, imagine if it is good, although they speak very well of this restaurant, not much is said about their rice, and the truth is that they are to frame: with a grain halfway between the bomb and the long, to accumulate flavor but maintain texture, and funds out of all the scraps of great fish that treats, so that nothing could go wrong. Oh, and another that makes individual portions. In other words, everything is very good.