Stella and I headed to Don Quijote nearby my place for lunch on Friday. We’ve been talking about Spanish food for some time, and we thought that it would be nice to try out this place for a change. After all, there has been some decent reviews about the place and we were both craving for some paella.

Toasted bread with herb butter. This came as one of the complimentary starters.

The interior of the place. Pretty nice bar counter. I’m sure that it would look much nicer in the evenings.

We ordered the pumpkin and leek soup. Pretty good. Had a bit of the sweet nutty flavour from the pumpkin, and it was just the right consistency for me. Stella felt it was not thick enough, but the flavour was certainly there.

Berenjenas al Horo (or Oven-baked Eggplant) . This was a bit of a surprise. I think I expected it to be -well- an oven grilled eggplant. So I wasn’t expecting it when it came in a pot, in some kind of vegetable stew. That’s not to say that it didn’t taste good, because it did. I loved the stock base and drank lots of it. I think the soup was some kind of white wine soup with celery and tomatoes, something like what clams/mussels would be cooked in. Damned delicious.

And finally, what we were waiting for – the paella. This was GOOD. We had a choice over wet and dry versions of the paella and we chose the wet one. I suspect dry just means that they leave it in the oven for a longer period of time. Some may like it drier so that they can scrape the burnt rice off the bottom of the pan after. I know I like to do that. However, I loved the wet version and definitely would prefer it to the dry one. The clams and mussels were fresh too, so this was really good. I would definitely come back just for this.

I think after trying a couple of Spanish places in Singapore (Tapas Tree, Esmerelda), this has to rank as the current top choice of the lot for me. I hope to return to try out the other kinds of tapas with Stella in the next trip. I don’t know why they were so empty during the lunch hour – perhaps not many people have found this place, or it could be due to the location. Well it just means more space for us then.

Us, full and happy after our little Spanish feast.