Cal Negre - traditional paella in Roses

Paella is the quinessential dish of Spain, a mix of rice, meat and seafood served straight from the paellera pan. Tourist restaurants will offer branded paellas with pictures of the dish, but for the Spanish, this is a dish treated with almost reverance, normally eaten at lunchtimes (too heavy for later), and most commonly on Thursdays. The quality of the sea-food, the rice cooked to an al dente perfection and the rich deep flavour of the caldo cooked in a traditional home-made fashion.

We were lucky enough to be invited up to Roses by some friends of ours whose family have had a house in Roses since the time before holidays by the sea were popular and they took us to Cal Negre, a restaurant the family has visited for many years.

This isn't the right place to rave about restaurants, but it is interesting the way in which the seafront restaurants are rarely the ones chosen by locals. In among the backstreets, restaurants have to offer something different or better as they can't trade on their location so much. And they so they will need to make their mark on their reputation, serving good food to people who are year round residents, rather than chasing a fast buck in the short three months of summer.

Cal Negre is one of those small back street family-run restaurants that locals know and which we would never have known about without our friends introduction. As paella takes a while to cook, though the table was booked, our friends telephoned beforehand, so they could prepare a paella for ten.

We do not eat paella very often (despite having been here for some time), so we claim no great expertise, but this was a proper paella served in a single large pan for ten prepared specifically for us, not pre-cooked or pre-prepared, with crab-legs that you have to suck the meat from, langoustines and crayfish and chicken pieces and freshly cooked gambas.

Like many other authentic restaurants it's tucked away. Something we've found, is that for a restaurant slightly off the main strip to survive, they must be doing something right with their food.