Restaurant L'Alqueria — Restaurant in Girona

Best paella ever and my favourite restaurant in Spain.

I have been to Spain a couple of times and had great paellas before. Yet L’Alqueria is special. Not only do they cook with ingredients so fresh that you can taste it, but they cook the rice so perfectly that they are not only slightly burnt for flavours and texture but at the same time moist, almost creamy in the interior of the grains.

We had the seafood paella and black paella. The seafood paella is bursting with deep shrimp flavours and you can smell the umami even before having the first bite. In contrast to the savoury umami of the seafood paella, they cook the black paella with scallion roots which pairs wonderfully with the fresh squid for maximum natural sweetness. Pure genius.

We also ordered the beef fillet, iberico ham and a bottle of red wine recommended by the waitress. Everything is priced so reasonably that I can feel the owner of the restaurant is truly hoping their customers are able enjoy good food and wine freely.

I made the reservation via WhatsApp and got prompt and friendly response. The team also shows professionalism and passion for food when I asked for food and wine recommendations upon arriving the restaurant. I read a few negative reviews saying that they discriminate certain customers. As an Asian, I feel no discrimination but only love and respect for their food. The team deserves to be proud of what they are doing - serving the best paellas and letting people from around the world know how good paellas can be.

Visit L’Alqueria and I believe you will feel just the same as I do. :)

(Remember to make a...

We were basically not allowed into the restaurant when we did not have reservations and they are "fully booked". The restaurant was not even half full. Similar to the review from 3 weeks ago, we sensed the eyes and tone of discrimination from the lady. Do not recommend, there are better restaurants around Girona.

Edit: in response to owner, the eyes of your staff and the amount of people inside with just less than 2 hrs of closing do not lie. We've been to several very busy restaurants in Europe that are fully booked and they would still try to accommodate us in any way possible, not just straight up reject - basically it does not make sense. I think this in itself says something. Thank you.

Edit2: I'm not sure why there's so much defensiveness about this if you believe you did nothing wrong. I am just stating what I've seen and informing others what I've experienced. Like I said earlier, I am also not the only one that have experienced this similar situation. Whether other customers believe what we say and come to your restaurant or not is up to them, neither of us can control that. That is what reviews are all about. Respecting reservations and keeping professionalism that way is a good thing, other restaurants do it too and I am not saying that its bad. Each restaurant run differently and we as customers have little to no say in how you operate. Thanks for the...

Service was unbelievably bad. If I could give zero stars, I would. Lady was so unenthusiastic and hard to get hold of (nobody attended our table for 15 minutes despite multiple attempts to get their attention). It might be the worst service my wife and I have had in the last 10 years. We asked for bread, which didn’t arrive for 30 minutes until we reminded her and then she brings two small slices for two people. Being polite and assuming they had ran out (why else serve such pitiful portions), we didn’t ask for more. Turns out it’s 2.7e each and we should know to ask for more. Hard to put into words the general uncomfortable feeling of disdain we felt, although I have seen another reviewer who felt similarly so we aren’t alone.

Food was pretty poor. Paella was burnt (I know what good paella is, and how it should be sticky/brown, but this was turned into carbon..). I suspect we were just unlucky near the end of service as other portions...