“La Vecchia Roma” Restaurant And A Quick Stroll Around Dénia.

As my dad would say “it’s nice in Dénia, especially after eight”. This has become a silly joke between us, one of those that you can’t remember how, when, where or why it originated, nor do you remember why you found it funny in the first place (probably it was me taking the mick). Whatever the case, there is some truth to it, especially in the summer. Hence why on Wednesday, seeing as we had something to celebrate (nothing exciting, but any excuse to go out for a meal) we trotted down to the coastal town for a stroll and a bite to eat.

Wandering through the streets of local seaside towns on a summer evening, once the sun has disappeared behind the closest mountain, is one of my ideal ways to spend a few hours. As you’ve probably already guessed by now, I adore this season. Now it’s gradually coming to an end, I’m trying my best to make the most of the last few days as best I can, before the smell of everything autumnal permeates the air.

I think it must have something to do with school summer holidays, the sense of freedom you get when you have no cares in the world and no classes to attend, that makes me love this time of year so much. I’m still a big kid at heart, and as a lot of you know, I grew up in this area in the 80’s, when we had 3 months summer holiday to enjoy the wonderful weather, and we certainly did. Right, enough of this silly, soppy nostalgic talk, back to Denia and our delicious meal.

Pep is a huge fan of pizza. He has a couple of favourite restaurants, one is our local Italian in Benissa, “La Plazoleta” (review here), the other is “San Giuseppe” (website here) near the Las Marinas road in Dénia. Their version is a massive pizza with a really fine base that is best shared between two, or just make sure you’re extremely hungry.

Earlier this year, I think for another special occasion (obviously!), Pep was searching Tripadvisor for a restaurant in Dénia. At the time, La Vecchia Roma (website here, Tripadvisor page here) was number one of all restaurants in Dénia (it’s number 4 now I think) and being a pizza and pasta restaurant, Pep said we had to give it a go. It was a fantastic meal.

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It’s a small restaurant located on Calle De La Mar, close to various live music venues (unfortunately they’re not open at the moment though). Because of it’s size and popularity it’s very advisable to book, especially if you plan on going at the weekend or during the summer.

They do have a few small tables outside on the path, pretty close to the road. Seeing as we’re not keen on air-conditioning, we booked one of them for our dinner on Wednesday night. It was blowing a gail when we arrived, that hot “poniente” wind that feels like someone left the oven door open with the fan on. The first half an hour of our meal we were having to hold on to glasses, serviettes, table mats, handbags, hair, clothes, etc in fear it would get blown down the street. Thankfully it calmed down and let us enjoy our food in peace.

To start we ordered the Anti Pasti, a (large) selection of different roasted vegetables. The waiter advised us against this at first, saying it’s a very big portion. He obviously didn’t know who he was dealing with, when it comes to veggies we can eat huge amounts!

It was delicious and beautifully presented. One of my breadsticks got blown down the street as it was still very blowy at this time but we managed to eat everything else. The waiter seemed quite surprised.

They make their own pasta using ecological flour, the pizza bases are made with eco flour too. They have gluten free pasta as well and, although they don’t make this themselves it’s a good quality brand, brought from Italy if I remember rightly. I had a gluten free option on our first visit and it was very good. A 1€ supplement is charged for this. You can also have gluten free pizza, for this you pay 3€ supplement.

For the main course I chose the “Pasta Negra”, black tagliatelle served with a “camarón” (shrimp) sauce and 4 big prawns. It was divine, the prawns were wonderful, as was the pasta and the sauce. As usual I didn’t manage to eat it all (I wanted to save a space for the pudding I had in mind too, more on that in a minute) so they put it in a plastic tub thingy for me to take away.

Pep had the “Pizza Napolitana De La Casa”, basically a Margherita with anchovies (anchoas) they prepare themselves and black olives (aceitunas negras). I tried a small piece and it was delicious. The base was really tasty.

The desserts are all homemade. Dark chocolate mousse (made without cream, just how I like it), tiramisu, panna cotta and a few more which sounded delicious were scribbled on the blackboard. Also their well known profiteroles. We’d seen these on our first visit but decided against them as the portion is humungous. This time though, for the sake of our blog of course, we ordered them to share.

I rarely eat anything with lactose, it doesn’t really agree with me, but I’d decided before we arrived at the restaurant that I don’t want to leave this earth without trying the most gorgeous profiteroles I’ve ever seen. We could have done with one more person to help us eat them though.

Three huge homemade choux pastry balls are filled with vanilla ice cream and in between each ball sits a large mound of cream. Chopped pistachios cover all of this and then, as if this isn’t enough, the waitress pours over hot chocolate sauce. My mum would have thought she’d died and gone to heaven!! I’m sure if I’d have sent her a pic and told her to come and help us out eating them she would have been there in seconds.

As you can imagine, we were extremely full. We’d arrived at the restaurant at 9:15pm and we didn’t leave until 12:30am! Not because of slow service or any fault of the restaurant, just because we’d eaten far too much and were enjoying sitting there on a warm summer evening. I really recommend giving this restaurant a go, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Just make sure you book.

Once we could stand up we had our usual stroll down to the sea. As usual and much to Pep’s dismay, I like to walk along near the port where the hippy stands are. Don’t ask me why, I rarely buy anything aside from the odd ankle chain, it’s normally the same stuff year in year out. It just makes me feel like I’m on holiday, perusing the stalls and watching the tourists buying little trinkets to take back home with them.

And that was our little outing to Dénia. We’re now back to eating light, certainly for the next few days. Thank goodness for vegetables!! As always, I’m back on Valley Fm on Saturday (tomorrow) just after 1pm. You can listen online here or, if you live in the Orba or Jalón Valleys on 94.5FM or 102.6FM. If you’d like to listen to last week’s show, here’s the link.

Right, I’m off to enjoy the last of the hot weather, looks like it’s taking a turn for the worse tomorrow. Thanks for reading. As usual, any suggestions or questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch, either in the comments below or on our contact us page here. See you very soon. Love Georgie and Pep xxx