Paella is a Spanish dish of rice, vegetables, and seafood or meat cooked and served in a large pan.

It is a popularly consumed dish even in many Latin American nations and its main ingredient is rice, which has a yellowish color due to a spice called saffron. Though its unique smell is unfamiliar to us, saffron is an essential part of traditional paella that emphasizes the scent. The traditional way of cooking paella includes chicken and seafood, and pork and other vegetables can also be cooked together to suit varied preferences.

The way to cook paella is simple, and how the food is contained in a large, shared pan from which a group of people eat together resembles the Korean food culture. Even scraping of the rice stuck on the pan at the end is similar to the way we eat nurungji, or a scorched rice, making the dish all the more familiar.

Restaurant Paella is located inside the Latin American Cultural Center Museum. The space that faces the central hall with a fountain is the restaurant. It is open only for lunch and serves full course paella meals, which comprise wine, salad, paella, and steak and are finished off with fruit and coffee. Paella is cooked to tailor to the Korean appetite; instead of stir-fried raw rice and saffron according to the original method, steamed rice and gardenia seeds are used to achieve the flavor.

Restaurant Paella is operated by reservations. You may make a reservation at least one day prior to your desired visit either by phone or on the website’s message board.

Written and photos by Park Hee-eun

Website latina.or.kr

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