Eating & Drinking

The Jalon Valley has a plethora of rustic restaurants offering excellent food at low prices. You would need to stay here for weeks to try them all! The restaurants here are extremely child-friendly and all offer a "menu del dia" - a three-course meal inclusive of refreshment, which typically will offer bread and garlic mayonnaise, followed by a choice of starter, main course and dessert with local wine, beer or soft drink included. Menus range from around 10€ per person. Our villa folder includes some of our favourites - tried and tested of course!

As the area is, in the main, agricultural, there are vast areas of orange, lemon, nispero, avocado, almond and olive trees - not to mention the vineyards - that lend the area a peaceful, beautiful outlook that is a far cry from the resort towns with which you may be more familiar. This provides the perfect backdrop to lazy days and long lunches within the abundance of rustic restaurants in the area. Jalon (pronounced - Halon) offer several "bodegas" or wine cellars, of course a by-product of all the vine groves of the area. Superb wine, port, sherry at exceptionally low cost. The local Jalon wine is available to taste in the bodegas in the town and costs around 5€ for 5 litres.

There is an abundance of fresh fish here too - Alicante and Calpe ports being of prime importance to the fishing industry - and the combination of fresh fish, outstanding fruit and vegetables, olive oil and local wine means that the diet here is truly healthy.

The Valencian paella, made with rice, chicken, rabbit and vegetables, is the typical dish in Valencian gastronomy. Each village has its own variation and preference because rice mixes well with so many different ingredients. In some inland regions, the main dish is gazpacho (a cold soup of bread, tomatoes, garlic, salt, vinegar and oil). It is custom to cook lamb chops over the fire together with varieties of sausage such as longaniza (long and thin), black pudding and chorizo (spiced pork sausage).

Valencia is a land of tasty sweetmeats and bakery products. There is bread of all sizes and flavours; panquemados (toasted bread), Valencian doughnuts, turnovers, coconut cakes, anisette rolls, almond rosegons, egg-rings for Easter, Epiphany rings, and so on, all available at the many panaderias and pastelerias. As for drinks, a special mention must be made of horchata made from almonds, which is served as a cool refreshment, and natural orange juice mixed with cava (Catalonian wine similar to champagne). Wine production is notable, as shown by the existence of 75,000 hectares of vineyards in the region of Valencia.

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