Paella, a symbol of community and hope in Valencia
Luis Valls is a Michelin-starred chef who owns El Poblet, his restaurant in Valencia, Spain. After severe flooding hit the area in late October, chef Luis and his partner Almudena joined other chefs and volunteers to help WCK teams provide thousands of meals to people in need.
Luis and Almudena are stepping outside of their restaurant to cook paella in the muddy streets of Valencia for the community. Paella is a dish with roots in 8th-century Spain. The original recipe for the dish as we now know it today is believed to have originated in the Valencia region. Paella Valenciana typically features rabbit and chicken and unites the entire region. For families in this part of Spain, paella represents community and tradition.
By serving this comforting staple, our teams, working shoulder-to-shoulder with chefs like Luis, are providing hope to families impacted by the floods, one plate of food at a time. Paella is all about community, making it the perfect meal to bring people together—especially as Valencia focuses on recovery efforts.
Paella gets its name from the pans used to prepare it. These pans are a common tool for WCK; they’re incredibly versatile and transportable, and we can set them up without any infrastructure in a Field Kitchen soon after responding to a disaster. Rice, the star of a paella, is a versatile starch that our teams worldwide serve in myriad ways. Rice is often at the heart of the first dishes we make when we start working somewhere, and it’s not unusual to have a large part of our operation dedicated to it.
WCK’s first-ever cookbook, Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope, shares many of the ways our teams have used paella pans and rice to serve millions of meals to communities in need. Learn more about the cookbook here.
