Benidorm’s cuisine combines the best ingredients in Mediterranean cuisine: rice, fresh fish and seafood, fruits and vegetables from the garden…and even great wines, especially white wines, from local wineries.

The delights of the Costa Blanca

Throughout the region you’ll find delicious dishes of typical Mediterranean cuisine. On the Costa Blanca there are high quality fish and shellfish, the ingredients of dishes such as arroz a banda and caldero (based on rock fish, monkfish and others such as conger eel or mujol). You’ll also find excellent salted fish. In the mountain regions, you’ll find dishes such as olleta, which includes pork, sausages, turnip, pumpkin, chickpeas, prickly pears and beans. And don’t forget the Chocolate Museum in Villajoyosa, the Nougat Museum in Jijona and the Conventual Bakery in Orihuela.

Now we’re going to focus on Benidorm, so you can get your mouth watering before you come!

Classic sweet and savoury recipes from Benidorm

You’ll see many typical dishes in the local restaurants of Benidorm: the most traditional are rice with red mullet and pumpkin, rice with anchovies with spinach, arroz a banda, pebrot, coca farcida, San Blas cakes or buns and the Benidorm cake. Let’s see some of them.

Coca farcida

You’ll find this coca in the bakeries and patisseries of Benidorm, but it’s more traditional to make them at home. The dough is made with olive oil, sunflower oil, milk, white wine, flour and a pinch of salt. The most common is that the filling is made with onions, natural tomato sauce, canned tuna, blood sausage and…oregano! That gives it a distinctive touch. The coca is covered, so that it has an appearance similar to the Galician empanada.

Arroz a banda

Arroz a banda is one of the classic rice dishes of the Valencian coast, along with paella (mixed, classic, seafood, etc.), arroz al senyoret, arroz caldós, etc., but it’s especially popular here in Benidorm and the Alicante area. It’s made in a similar way to paella, only that after cooking the fish it’s kept back to cook the vegetables. That’s where the name comes from, as a banda means “apart.”

Pebrot

Pebrot is a unique dish in the area, since it’s made with lampuga, a blue fish that exists in very few areas of the planet. The fish is cooked in a delicious sauce based on red peppers, green peppers, garlic, olive oil and bay leaf. It’s a very tasty dish that you can’t miss!

Pebrera Tallaeta

This is another very original and characteristic dish from Benidorm, which surprises everyone. Unusually, it combines ingredients such as sangatxo (a part of the tuna that is preserved in brine) and ñoras, garden vegetables such as red peppers, green peppers, onion, garlic, ripe tomatoes, potatoes and pumpkin. Added to this are the aromas of olive oil, parsley and toasted almonds.

San Blas buns

As the name suggests, these buns are eaten during the San Blas festivities, which are held in February. So if you thought that there’s nothing to do in Benidorm in February, you’re very wrong!

And what are these buns like? Very simple, they’re vaguely reminiscent of Valencian burnt bread and the like, only they don’t contain yeast and they have a characteristic lemon and cinnamon aroma. They are made with eggs, cornmeal, almond or ground almond flour, lemon zest, cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top, which when caramelised in the oven gives it a crunchy touch.

Benidorm cake

The Benidorm cake or tart was really an invention so that tourists would go home with good memories of Benidorm. What not everyone knows is that this tart (actually, it’s more of a sponge cake) is inspired by traditional Arab recipes. At first glance it looks like a dry sponge cake…but it isn’t. Its ingredients combine to perfection ground marcona almonds (which are common in the area), lemon and orange zest, dates, raisins and angel hair. A detail: the authentic Benidorm cake does not contain wheat flour, only almond flour.

And these dishes are only part of it. We encourage you to try the local cuisine of this city the next time you visit us, and if you stay at the Grand Luxury Hotel your trip is sure to be perfect!