Restaurant La Herradura — Restaurant in Valencia

Tourist trap with acceptable food. While the whole coast is full of 1st line sea-view tourist traps, this one is middle of the range. I am Spanish and am very knowlegeable of authentic local food since I have family in Valencia. During our stop I decided to have dinner in this spot for practical reasons: shade, 1st line sea view and tourist opening hours (local restaurants don´t serve dinner before 20:00). Ordered a few local dishes and didn´t eat 50% of them. Waiter pushed us to order pa&tomacet with allioli. Bread and allioli were OK but the tomato was a joke, they actually served fried tomato paste, and they charged extra for each piece of bread (not customary in the rest of the country). The salad "tomate y ventresca" was a rip-off. The local tomato is (was) amazingly good, but what makes this dish a delicatessen is the "ventresca": a more noble cut of the canned tuna. As you can see in the picture, the "ventresca" they gave us was rancid and soft so we didn´t eat it. In summary, I paid 15€ for a tomato.

The paella valenciana con pollo & conill should be a basic must-know for any cook in the region. Ours was OK, the rice was well-cooked, but definitely not the way it SHOULD be done. There were barely any pieces of meat on the paella, which consisted of 98% of rice and beans. The beans were overcooked though and the chicken was overcooked. This all made sense because we saw the cook sit down for her own dinner right after we ordered... so basically she overcooked our paella while she was on a break.

Most locals just grabbed a table and had a couple beers and maybe snacks, but no local stayed for propper dinnner. I would only recommend this place if you´re on a hurry to grab a ferry, need to grab some dinner before 1900 and want some nice views. Otherwise I would avoid and recomeend somthing trully local and less...

Pure incompetence, I've never experienced that before. Nobody there speaks a single word of English. We know this because every time a different waiter came who didn't know what had happened before. Two colas came, although only one was ordered. The tray was placed so awkwardly that the Coke was blown over by the wind and 90% of it landed on my girlfriend's dress. Of course, we didn't get a new Coke or an apology.

Then came the good batata bravas. 10 minutes later, the squid - but not the fried squid (they even asked once when we ordered and my girlfriend showed it on the menu and I said FRIED out loud), but the pickled squid (which unfortunately we both don't like). When we pointed out that we had ordered something else, nothing happened. After several minutes, my girlfriend went inside only to be told that they had prepared what she had ordered. In the end, we didn't have to pay for it, which was the best thing about the whole service....

Absolutely amazing place!

I was recommended the cold peppers, the squid and the see food paella and also got a jar of Sangria everything was local, unique and amazing! Significantly better than many higher ranked places....

The waitress spoke perfect and clean English and was absolutely great and welcoming in 2 weeks in Spain this was the best service ... I understood it was her family restaurant and other waitresses looked a bit more stiff....

In any case I couldn't recommend it enough to anyone happening to be on the beach + a significant advantage is that you don't have to book 3-4 days in advance to spend more money and get worse food :)

*edit - have visited the restaurant another 2 times and while the food was good the service was nowhere near as perfect as during the first visit and quite...