La Paella

I fell in love with paella when I studied in Madrid a couple of years ago. My host mother would make a huge pot of paella every weekend. Â Sheâ€™d throw in mariscos, chorizos, and pollo and I remembered eating platefuls of the rice. When I came back to the US, it was difficult to find paella that matched her standards. The best plate of paella I had was at Bolo, but for their cheap price, La Paella came pretty close.

La Paella offers a lunch special for $12.95 that includes a soup & salad for the appetizer, an entree of either vegetarian, chicken, or seafood paella, and green tea ice cream for dessert. Itâ€™s a steal if you ask me. Even though I didnâ€™t like the soup (I hate soup in general), I liked dipping the bread into the gazpacho-like soup. Their salad was better than I thought; we got some nice quality mesclun greens.

I ordered the chicken paella which was great! There was so much food that I had to doggy bag at least 1/3 of it. The paella came with the traditional chorizo, peas, etcâ€¦ Comparing this paella to Boloâ€™s, I felt that the rice was a bit more mushy and the saffron flavor wasnâ€™t as strong. La Paella did have some very good chorizos in their paella though. Despite these criticisms, I was happy since it came with a nice price tag. Xi ordered the seafood paella and was pretty satisfied with her choice. We both loved their green tea ice cream. It was sweet and creamy, just the way ice cream should be.

Itâ€™s such a shame that this restaurant often hidden from the common passerbyâ€™s view. I probably passed by this place five times before I noticed it. Itâ€™s next to St. Marks and they usually have signs promoting their lunch special.