Inside Valencia LOCAL Breakfast Spots 🇪🇸 Spanish Food

Valencia has a unique breakfast routine. The first meal of the day, called desayuno, is typically coffee-based and sweet, with some caloric pastries to kickstart the day. Then around 10pm you've got the almuerzo. This is what locals in Valencia mean for a mid-morning snack. I just arrived in this beautiful Spanish city, and I cannot wait to immerse myself in the local culture and food. Get ready for some tasty Spanish treats. A traditional breakfast in Valencia starts with the famous horchata drink and fartons. This is the typical breakfast in Valencia, a sweet breakfast like most of the continental Europe. There are different horchaterias in Valencia, some of which are historical, and this is one of them, Horchateria de Miel, near the Plaza de la Reina, which is a beautiful square in the centre of Valencia, with incredible architecture and buildings, and beautiful space where to sit down, have dinner, and just enjoy the views. As you can see, I've ordered one horchata and one farton. A farton is this kind of long-shaped dough, kind of pastry, that's very typical of Valencia. It's supposed to have a spongy texture, and I actually ordered the one that has got chocolate in it. Oh yeah, I can feel it's warm, which is the best thing ever. Sometimes they just serve it cold. It's got some nuts on the top, chocolate inside, and you know, the long shape of this biscuit traditionally was made like this because it's supposed to be dipped into the horchata, which also has a long glass. So the horchata itself, I've ordered it mixed, which means half liquid and half granizada, like with shredded ice. They actually give you a straw. Let's break the ice a little bit. I love now this kind of texture and consistency. If you don't know, this is a drink of tiger nuts. It kind of tastes a little bit like almond milk, but tiger nuts are, they're not actually nuts, they're more like the family of tubers. It's not very sweet, yeah, very refreshing drink. Let's get into this beautiful fartons. Actually, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do it traditional way. I'm going to dip this into the horchata. Yeah, it kind of worked. It's kind of spongy, crunchy at the same time at the top because I've got the nuts, definitely sweet. It's kind of like similar to Nutella. And I might as well dip this into the coffee. Okay, that was the first chapter of this Valencian breakfast today, Desayuno, and that's how you start your day in Valencia. Next, we're going to go for a heavy, a step two of this Valencian breakfast tour. The second step of the Valencian breakfast is called almuerzo. Now the definition that Google gives me is the first substantial meal of the day just before noon. This is amazing, isn't it? It's something that comes before noon, like before lunch, but it's a substantial meal. You could say this is a brunch. Here in Valencia, their brunch is made usually of something that contains a lot of bread. That would be a bocadillo, which is like a large baguette filled with, well, you name it. It could be fish, it could be meat, it could be eggs, anything. And I'm here in a very famous place, like a very traditional and typical bar. You can see the atmosphere inside. It's called El Tostadero, and they are particularly famous for a bocadillo filled with cuttlefish. This is an amazing, authentic kind of place, typical bar, no tourists. I invite you to have a look at this sandwich. I would generally agree that this is kind of a substantial meal. If you want, we can try and count the piece of cuttlefish. One, two, three, four, five. There must be like 10, maybe 12 pieces of cuttlefish inside. I love this kind of crusty, deep-fried batter outside, and yeah, it's served in a fresh baguette. I can't wait. On the bottom, there is a little bit of a, kind of a sauce, I don't know if it's mayonnaise or something. Yeah, I just love this. I'm not entirely sure how to approach this monster. Oh yeah, I think it's mayonnaise on the bottom, yeah, mayonnaise, I think. The texture is that of calamari, yeah, and inside, it's alioli sauce. The garlicky alioli sauce really goes very well with the fish as well. Look at that, it almost looks like a potato, but it's cuttlefish. This may be one of the best sandwiches I've had in my life, a sandwich filled with crunchy fish. The batter outside is quite crunchy, but it kind of peels off very easily, and you've got this mix of texture, you've got the crunchy bread, then a little bit of crunch from the butter, and then kind of chewy cuttlefish, but chewy, but still kind of soft. You may think that fish bread is going to be a very dry kind of sandwich, but yeah, it's filled with alioli sauce, and really the alioli sauce, you know, brings the two things together, like the fish and the bread. You see, this is what I'm about, finding these local gems, confounding myself with the locals. Yeah, I'm not about modernity, I'm about traditional stuff. That was a beautiful experience, it was really good, but it wasn't heavy, it wasn't heavy, so I understand how this is like a pre-lunch thing, you may think, oh my god, you just had a big baguette filled with fish, yes, but it wasn't heavy, that's the thing, and it's a beautiful thing, maybe because it was with fish, if it was something else it would have been better. Yeah, I think from here I'm now going to a local market nearby, and probably will continue the brunch there. I'm walking to my next food objective, and here in Valencia it's super nice, like walking along this kind of small alleys, and from the houses you get this kind of smell from the kitchens of people like cooking, whatever sort of things, I was getting like a smell of some salsa, like tomato paste. The central market of Valencia is the Mercado, it's the place of gathering, especially in the early in the morning, for breakfast, for tapas pies, the place where locals come and buy fresh produce, like vegetables, fruits, fish, meat. Obviously the charcutería, the place where you can find the most famous Iberico ham, which is the jamón. The variety of fruits is really impressive, it's not only about oranges, obviously Spain is the main exporter of oranges all around Europe, having like a shot of fresh orange juice is typical in Valencia, it's a breakfast all over Spain really, but I think I'm just going to have some kind of different, fancy fruit juice, I think. The queue was really huge, but I managed to get some melon and coconut, kind of, well you could say it's a shake, oh no, it's actually a juice, it's not thick as a shake, it's actually a juice. Oh, this is, there's no sugar in this. And I would say even the structure is beautiful, the building is beautiful, with these arcs and these stained coloured glass windows. The good thing about this market is that in the centre you've got the section with the cooked food, you've got pasta, you've got lasagna, you've got all sorts of delicious things. One of the things that I was actually hoping to try in this market was Valencian coca. Coca Valenciana is similar to a pizza, but with a thicker dough and typically doesn't have a cheese layer. I thought I had found it in this market, until I realised I had ordered just a slice of pizza and it was too late to step back. A small guan with a topping of arugula, like rocket salad, and ham. There is tomato on top, there is parmesan as well. I think the bread is black because of the specific type of flour. Let's give it a try. Really good, nice and warm. Another thing that I wanted to find in the Mercado Central is this thing, which is called Pepito Valenciano. If I understand it correctly, it's like a fried sandwich, like this is a mini kind of baguette, a mini banh mi sandwich, which then was deep fried. Inside, usually there is a mixture of beef, garlic and onions, or it can be a vegetable kind of version with vegetables, ratatouille. It's a bit oily on the outside, so I don't really want to touch it, and I think I'll have to bite into this to actually find out what's inside. I can definitely taste tomatoes and roasted peppers. I'm not entirely sure, there is probably a source of protein, which I'm not entirely sure what it is. Let me give it a second bite. There's also egg inside, and maybe even tuna. Yeah, I think you can get very creative with this. And the bread, it's a bit deep fried, but it's not that crispy on the outside. It's a really nice snack to have pretty much any time of the day, I think. Now, just outside of the Central Market, we continue on this kind of brunch tour, and we're going to Afraiduría. Now, Afraiduría is the Spanish equivalent of a fish and chip shop in the UK. They sell all sorts of kind of fried fish snacks, like the pescado. It's typical mostly in the Andalusia region, where you can find Afraiduría pretty much every half a mile or so. It's a great spot to have a snack. They actually have more than fried fish. They've got morcilla, which is the blood sausage, croquetas, they even got chicharrón, which is pork belly, and yeah. I've ordered some fried shrimps, which is kind of like tempura. And also I've ordered some dogfish, which I've never had, to be honest. And it's a beautiful central place, like people are storming. It's almost kind of lunchtime, close to a very nice square, and it's just a beautiful way to kind of snack and also admire the beautiful architecture around you. I've also been served a little bit of... I think it's either mayonnaise or alioli sauce, and in fact I'm just going to start by dipping one of these beautiful tempura shrimps into it. Here we go. Looks awesome. Oh, you can tell the shrimps are fresh. Nice and chunky inside. Fried to perfection, super crispy. As you can tell from my channel, fried fish is one of my ultimate favorite kind of snack. And yeah, this is mayonnaise. I would have preferred probably alioli sauce, but mayonnaise is fine. This is the perfect kind of snack to chase with a caña. I mean, there's a lot of wind, so you kind of need to hold your stuff. It's been windy for two days in Valencia. I've never had dogfish in any kind of shape or form. It's cut in small cubes, and as you can see the beautiful batter all around. It's kind of like very good value for money, to be honest. These corns are filled with fried fish, and I think they're $5.95 each. So let's try the dogfish. It's got this kind of natural, kind of a sweet, slightly sour kind of hint. It's definitely very unique. I think these ones also blend themselves very well to the paint and the mayonnaise. Really strange, like kind of sweet and naturally vinegary. Like, this is really nice. My friend, thanks for joining me in this episode. Give it a like if you wish, and let's jump on the next food adventure.