La Niña

Last weeked we headed for Sitges looking to try some paella. Sitges is a small town located some 20 km south of Barcelona. During the summer Sitges is always full of tourists that enjoy the quiet beaches the town has to offer. During the winter, rumour has it that this is one of the best places around for a good paella!
The train ride takes about 40 minutes and offers some beautiful ocean views. Sitges welcomes you with an old fascioned train station and quaint little streets meandering down to the beach. The restaurant La Niña is located on the beach front, you can find it easily if you turn right by the curch and continue along the promenade. Actually, La Niña is only one of three restaurants, all adjacent to each other, all belonging to the same owners. The other two are called Santa Maria and La Pinta, after the names of the three ships in Cristopher Colombus' fleet when he first went to the New World. They are a great place for a sunday lunch with some friends or family. The food is too tasty to waste your stomach on starters, so we went straight to the main courses. This time we had:

Arroz negro
Paella marinera
Fideuà blanco

We had been planning to try arroz negro for some time, and this was our chance. Literally black rice, this dish is similar to paella, with rice and seafood, but squid ink is added making it completely black. The recipe for this traditional Catalan dish (also common in Valencia) includes cuttlefish or squid, rice, garlic, green cubanelle peppers, sweet paprika, olive oil and seafood broth. The taste is definitely worth the black teeth you get after eating.

Like the arroz negro, the paella marinera came in a traditional paellera, the shalow pans in which these rice dishes are cooked. It was a rich paella with plenty of seafood, including enourmous mussels, shrimps, crayfish and squid. The rice is yellow because of the saffron and you just can't stop eating it. Finnaly, the fideuà is a typical dish from Valencia. Basically, for the untrained eye, it looks just like paella, but instead of rice you have noddles. In fact "fideu" is the catalan word for noodles. Myself, I prefer the paella, but many people like the fideuà better. You have to try both and choose for yourself.
This seafood feast was absolutely wonderful. By the end we were so full that we could almost fall asleep right there on the table. Of course it all went down with a delicious sangria de cava. This time the sangria had strawberries and the mixed tastes of cava and red fruits was really, really good. ¡Salut!


Price: 22 euros/person
Address: Passeig De La Ribera 65-68, 08870 Sitges
Phone Number: +34 938940999

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