5 Best Foods To Try in Alicante, Spain

While I spent two years living in Madrid, one of the things that excited me the most about moving to Alicante, sight unseen, was all the new things I’d get to experience by living somewhere new. It turns out that a lot of the things I thought were “Spain things” were actually just Madrid things. And day by day, I’m learning what things are Alicante things — especially in regards to food!

So here are just a few of the special foods to try in Alicante during your next visit.

Café Bombón

Okay, so I’m not sure if this one is special to Alicante, but I will say that there seems to be a slight obsession with it here, and I’m here for it. And I know that I’d never heard of it when I lived in Madrid. But essentially, café bombón is an espresso shot served with condensed milk!

When you order a café bombón, it’s served in one of two ways: either they bring it to you with the condensed milk already added, and it looks like a cute little layered drink as the milk sinks to the bottom and the espresso floats on top; or, they’ll bring you an espresso shot with a little single-serving pouch of condensed milk for you to squeeze in yourself. After it’s layered appropriately, you stir it to mix the sweetness of the milk with the bitterness of the espresso. So good.

At first, I thought only a couple of specific places around town served café bombón, but then after ordering it at a variety of places and never being told no, I’m forced to conclude that Alicante takes café bombón very seriously. Semi-related, there’s a coffee/cafe chain around Spain called Bombon Boss, and it seems to have started right here in Alicante.

Pan con tomate y alioli

Bread with tomato for breakfast is classic everywhere in Spain, though different regions have their own twists on how they make it. In many parts of Spain, the tomatoes are blended and then spread onto toast and seasoned with olive oil and salt, but in Catalonia, the tomatoes are rubbed onto the bread instead.

And while you can order your pan con tomate with pretty much anything else you’d like — ham or tuna, for example — I recently learned that in Alicante, pan con tomate y alioli is a popular choice. Alioli is pretty much what we would call “aioli” in English, and it’s a favorite dipping sauce for potatoes here in Spain, but I had never seen it with toast and tomato before.

Fideua

When you think about traditional Spanish food, does paella come to mind? While you can find it almost anywhere in Spain, it originated in the city of Valencia. However, while Alicante is in the Community of Valencia (almost like a state), there’s quite a rivalry between the two cities.

Anyway, it turns out that Alicante has its own twist on paella. Fideua is prepared very similarly to paella, with the same spices, ingredients, and crispy bottom layer that makes it different from other dishes. But while paella is made with rice, fideua is made with noodles.

We were introduced to fideua on our first visit to L’arruzz, a rice restaurant here in Alicante. We looked over the menu items and asked the waiter about fideua, which we had never seen before. When he told us it was super local, we decided to give it a try. As someone whose favorite food was macaroni and cheese as a kid, I’m definitely a fan.

Arroz a banda

If you don’t want macaroni-like noodles but want something similar to paella — and you want another Alicante regional dish — you can order arroz a banda. To my untrained eye, paella and arroz a banda look nearly identical, and also Google isn’t really telling me too many reasons why it’s different from paella.

The main difference I’m reading is that apparently, in arroz a banda, you put the rice in the pan before the broth, while in paella it’s the other way around. Plus, in arroz a banda, it’s typically always made with seafood while paella could be made with a variety of meats, like duck or chicken, or even vegetarian. And the last difference is that (I think) paella is supposed to have crispy rice on the bottom, and that doesn’t seem to be a concern with arroz a banda.

Coca (lots of different types)

Coca de mollitas is something that caught our eye in the window of a bakery not long after moving to Alicante. Specifically, the mollitas de chocolate. And you can find them in almost any bakery in Alicante because they’re a staple. While mollitas kind of look like a crumbly tart, they taste much different from how they look. They’re not nearly as sweet as you might expect — in fact, I feel like they’re more salty.

Traditionally made with just a few ingredients: flour, olive oil, and salt. So I’m sure you can understand how these are hardly a dessert, especially when they don’t have chocolate drizzled over the top. It seems that they’re meant to be savory, but I think I prefer mine with chocolate. 🙂

There are lots of other types of “cocas” that we’ve learned about since being here, too. For example, another popular one is coca amb tonyina, which is kind of like a thin empanada filled with pine nuts and tuna. But it turns out that coca is just the type of bread, so there are basically unlimited options for the kinds of cocas you might find in Alicante. (Also very popular during the Hogueras Alicante festival.)

 

So, there you have it — 5 foods to try in Alicante during your next visit!

Have you had any of these before, or which are you most excited to try? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

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