Valencia: Old Town Tapas Food Tour & Drinks with Local Stops

4.96

(148 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

“You have to try this one,” our guide Ana grinned, holding out a plate of clóchinas—tiny Valencian mussels I’d never heard of before. The bar was crowded but not in a touristy way; people called out to each other in Spanish, laughing over plates of patatas bravas and croquetas. I could smell garlic and fried peppers everywhere. We’d only just started the Valencia food tour and already my hands were sticky from olive oil. Someone at the next table offered us a taste of their tortilla, which felt like the most natural thing in the world here.

I kept falling behind the group because every corner in Ciutat Vella seemed to pull me in—a flash of tilework, or that weirdly perfect light bouncing off Plaza Redonda’s yellow walls. Ana would pause now and then to tell us about the city’s layers—Moorish towers, Roman stones underfoot—and sometimes she’d just laugh at her own stories. At Central Market, it was chaos in the best way: vendors shouting over pyramids of oranges, someone slicing jamón so thin you could see sunlight through it. I tried esgarraet for the first time (roasted peppers and salted cod), which sounds odd but actually tasted like summer if that makes sense.

The last stop was this tiny place behind Plaça de la Reina where we dipped fartons into cold horchata. I didn’t expect to like it so much—sweet but not too much, kind of nutty? A couple next to us explained how they always come here after work for agua de Valencia (the cocktail, not water). It felt like everyone belonged except maybe us—but then again, nobody seemed to mind. I still think about that view of the cathedral as we wandered out into the evening air.