La Pepica

La Pepica opened in 1898, when Pepica's grandparents, Francisco Balaguer Aranda from Sagunto and his wife Josefa Marqués, started selling snacks to the workers of the port of València. More than a century later it is still in the same spot, facing the beach of the Malvarrosa.

The walls are covered with photographs of its famous customers: Ernest Hemingway, who wrote about his meals here in his own books; the painter Joaquín Sorolla; and several kings of Spain. They have all passed through its blue-and-white dining room or its terrace over the sand.

The seafood paella and arroz a banda, cooked over a wood fire and always for a minimum of two people, are the reason it is still full at midday, more than a hundred and twenty-five years after opening.