Spanish Food — What to Eat and What It Costs

Tapas culture, paella done right (and wrong), and what it actually costs.

Spanish food isn't really 'ordered' so much as grazed: a plate of jamón here, a few tapas there, dinner that doesn't start until 9pm. A tapa runs $2–6, a full sit-down meal $12–25 per person, and a nice dinner with wine $25–45. The two dishes to get right: tapas (order a few per person and share, don't get one entrée each) and paella (it's a Valencian rice dish, not a seafood-and-saffron catch-all — the version aggressively photographed on a Ramblas menu board is almost never the good one).

Spanish food trips up more travelers than it should, and almost always for the same reason: ordering it like it's a normal European cuisine with starters and mains, instead of the shared, grazing, absurdly-late-dinner culture it actually is. Here's what to actually order, roughly what it costs, and how to spot a paella that was made for a tour group instead of for you.

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Questions people actually ask

How does tapas ordering actually work?

Order a handful of small plates per group and share them — not one dish per person. A typical tapas dinner for two is 4–6 plates split between you, plus bread and a bottle of wine. Many bars in Granada and a few in other Andalusian cities still bring a free tapa with every drink, unasked.

How do I find good paella, not tourist paella?

Skip anywhere with a laminated menu, a tout outside trying to seat you, and a picture of paella on the sign — that's the tourist-trap trifecta. Good paella takes 20+ minutes to cook to order and is often only served at lunch; if a restaurant offers it all day, every day, on demand, be suspicious. Valencia is the dish's home region and the safest bet for the real thing.

What time do people actually eat dinner in Spain?

Lunch is typically 2–3:30pm (often the biggest meal of the day) and dinner rarely starts before 9pm, sometimes later — many kitchens don't even open until 8:30pm. Showing up at a restaurant at 6:30pm expecting dinner service is a classic first-timer mistake; that slot is for tapas and a drink, not a full meal.