In search of a good paella en Ciudad Real-La Arrocería de Picón

I am trying to bake and blog as much as possible while I can as when the baby is born, I´m not sure how much time I´ll have to spare on the blog. Seeing as I´m not keen on fish or seafood, paella has never been one of my favourite dishes, however I do enjoy it if it is a meat paella. The best paella is said to originate from Valencia but you can find paella throughout Spain. One of the best restaurants for paella in the Ciudad Real area is La Arrocería de Picón (unfortunately the website is only in Spanish at the moment-probably as you don´t find many foreigners or tourists around these parts!) The restaurant is located in the small rural village of Picón and is decorated in a very modern, elegant and chic manner. It is a very spacious restaurant with two eating areas, both of which have water features and with views of the countryside, which makes dining a pleasure. My husband and I went with my in-laws and we shared a paella between the four of us. I think we ordered a Valenciano paella, which contains chicken, rabbit and snails (however we ordered it without the snails for my benefit as I don´t like them) and also has red and green pepper and large white beans (fabes). Although the paella was huge we ate every last morsel and in my opinion it was the best paella I have eaten as of yet! The restaurant also serves other dishes if paella is not your cup of tea as the first time I went to this restaurant I chose lamb chops, which were also delicious.

We had room for dessert too and although the majority of the dessert menu is frozen ice cream-style products, which is a little disappointing, they have a small selection of homemade desserts. I opted for the mango cake (pictured below), which was definitely a good choice. It´s a mango mousse-like cake on a sponge cake base topped with slices of caramelized fresh mango slices. Delicious!

I thoroughly recommend visiting this restaurant if you are in the area although it tends to get very crowded at weekends so it´s better to book a table. One of the down sides about this restaurant is due to it being popular and busy, it can be very noisy and it is difficult to have a conversation.