The Arrocero of El Palmar

Rice, from the field to the pan

El Palmar sits on a sliver of land between the Albufera lagoon and the rice fields that surround it. Here the year follows the water: the fields are flooded and sown in late spring, turn a deep green through the summer, are harvested at the end of it and flooded again for the winter, when the birds arrive.

Our arrocero has worked these fields and cooked their rice for most of their life. When you sit at their table, you are eating rice that grew a few hundred meters away.

The fire and the pan

A paella valenciana is made in a wide, shallow pan over a fire of orange wood, which burns hot and gives a faint perfume to the rice. The ingredients are few and fixed — chicken, rabbit, flat green beans, garrofó (large white beans), tomato, saffron, olive oil, water and rice — and the rice is spread thin so that, at the end, it forms the toasted layer at the bottom known as the socarrat.

Our arrocero will show you each step and let you take part — or simply let you watch, glass in hand, while they decide the exact moment the fire must drop.

What a day with them looks like

You arrive in El Palmar around midday. While the fire takes, there is time for a short walk along the canals or a look at the boats. The paella is eaten from the pan, as it should be, followed by fruit and a coffee in the shade. Many guests then take a private boat onto the lagoon to watch the sun set over the water.

Time with our arrocero is part of our paella experience and of most of our private journeys.