Valencia Eats Throwback: Central Bar
While I’m staying at home due to COVID-19, I’m going back through my archives and writing about places I should have written about long ago. This one comes from Spain; hoping this eatery and its staff make it through this crisis.
As I wrote last week, if anyone asked me where I would want to eat in Valencia, my reply would be Kiosko La Pérgola, for a casual almuerzo or dinner. It’s an easygoing place to eat wonderful bocadillos, a place that kind of just feels like home.
If you were to ask me where the best food in Valencia could be found, another eatery rises to the top of that list. Within Valencia’s beautiful Mercado Central, full of fruit, vegetable, and charcuterie stands, butchers and fishmongers…
…is Central Bar. It comes with quite a pedigree, as it belongs to Michelin-starred chef Ricard Camarena’s restaurant group. Now, the reason why I wouldn’t choose to come to Central Bar for a casual meal, is that I’m not the only one who thinks that Central Bar has perhaps the best food in Valencia, and certainly unequaled in value.
So it’s always packed, and on top of that, they maddeningly don’t have an efficient way to queue for a table. One time, on one side of the bar, a well-mannered line formed - but I don’t know if that was something diners kind of organized organically or if the eatery set the line up. But usually it’s kind of a game of hovering over diners that you think are going to finish and rushing to grab a seat that you hope will fit your party size. So on most occasions, it’s just not really worth putting up with the stress of finding a spot.
The setup is that there are stools set up on opposite sides, with the servers in the middle…
… and a little kitchen on one end. They have handwritten specials of whatever fresh is in the market, but they also have some regular dishes on their menu.
They always serve a little bowl of olives and pickles.
This time, they gave my sister and me a free taste of their jamón ibérico de bellota, the one where the pigs roam around and eat acorns.
On this day, one of their specials were these beautiful red prawns.
They were just lightly seared on the griddle, but you can see that they were left practically raw.
I’m a huge fan of fritters and croquettes, so we ordered a buñuelo de bacalao (cod fritter) and a croqueta de pollo rustido (roasted chicken croquette). The croqueta was particularly memorable - very chicken-y and rather runny inside!
Then we had the patatas bravas “Lourdes Luz” (potatoes) - these are some of my favorites in Valencia! Crispy, yet evenly bathed in a suitably spicy red sauce.
On a different day, I came back for a bocadillo for almuerzo (mid-morning snack). Their bocadillos are a great value - just around 5€! This one was called the “Canalla,” and contains spicy morcilla (blood sausage), scrambled eggs, and pickled peppers. A good combination!
When my sister came back into town, we visited Central Bar again, because of the fond memories from the first visit. This time we made sure to order a whole plate of that jamón ibérico de bellota!
Again we had the buñuelos de bacalao, and the croquetas de pollo rustido. These buñuelos have a better appearance than the first ones actually - they should look more lump-like and not as brown as the first ones.
We of course had to have the patatas bravas again.
This visit occurred in springtime coinciding with the artichoke season, and we had these lovely fried artichokes with romesco sauce. I love how simply artichokes are prepared in Spain - either sautéed or fried with little adornment. Their artichokes are these small ones too, tender throughout except for just the outermost leaves.
Another springtime vegetable, baby fava beans, made an appearance, topped with these translucent sheets of pork belly. In Spain, they eat favas with the skin on, giving them kind of a bite in the flavor, so the unctuous pork belly is a good pairing.
These were the albondigas (meat balls) in red curry sauce. Strangely, this combination appears in many a restaurant in Valencia…
I truly think Central Bar sets the bar for quality in Valencia. The preparations are simple but executed to perfection - there’s a lot of competition for excellent patatas bravas and croquetas, and theirs truly are among the very best of the best - and their seasonal specials truly take advantage of Valencia’s bounty on land in the sea. But the stress of hovering indefinitely and trying to find a seat made it a place I went to mainly for special occasions, like having a visitor in town.
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Central Bar
inside of the Mercado Central
46001 Valencia
Spain
