With all the partying you’re sure to work up an impressive appetite so this section of our top tips covers off where to eat in Benicassim. The only slight snag is that during our limited experience with Benicassim’s eatery’s we didn’t find anything particularly impressive! You’ll find plenty of places to eat in Benicassim centre, however the festival arena and campsites also have their fair share of food outlets (some of them pretty nice for a shabby little food stand) but we’ll cover these off in a separate section. For now it’s onwards with the Beni restaurants:
Price
You can get a main meal in Benicassim for between 8-16EUR depending on the type of place you visit. By way of comparison most food in the festival arena ranges from 8-10EUR (Pizza 8.50, Burger 8.50, Noodles 8.50 – all very nice).
The main street is strewn with cafes, bars and restaurants, so you’ll never be short of choice. However, If you don’t check your bill properly, you may find yourself short of change. We ate in several places and in most of them we found ourselves billed incorrectly for one thing or another. Not that we’d suggest for one minute that the Restaurateurs of Beni-land would be trying to take advantage of us “less-than-awake” festival goers, but we would suggest you check the bill before coughing up your hard-earned.
Service
We can’t think of one place that serviced us quickly and when we say quick, we don’t mean fast food quick, we just mean take our order within 20 minutes of sitting down. Ok, ok, some places were on the ball and got you attended to, but the vast majority seemed to employ waiters that moved in slow motion. When we did get eventually get attended to the service was generally polite but far from exceptional (however do you need or even expect exceptional service in a festival environment, me thinks not).
Food Quality
Unfortunately for the most part the quality of food doesn’t make up for the poor service or below par billing accuracy. The food was generally of a mediocre standard, edible but nothing to write home about. That said we did eat in two or three places that would fall into the category of “we’d go there again”. Here are the details:
1) La Manduca
Web: www.lamanduca.net
Address: Calle Dolors, 12560, Benicasim
Providing what can only be described as the definition of “slow service” even when only partially full La Manduca does make up for this by the quality of food provided! Amongst our favourites were the Salmon pizza – proper meaty chunks of salmon and the Paella – which was big enough to feed a small family. Prices were reasonable too and to be fair once your order was eventually taken then the food came quick enough, it’s just actually getting hold of somebody to take our order that proved problematic.
2) Breakfast place (sorry we’ve lost the name)
Address: Carrer Dels Dolors, 12560, Benicasim
This place is on the left hand side of the road as you’re walking through Benicassim through the festival site. It has a selection of orange furniture outside and the inside is nicely decorated. Serving up what is probably the best “Festival Breakfast” in Benicassim for around 8 EUR. It does come with the statutory “dodgy sausages” (available from all restaurants in Benicassim), however despite not being “cheap” it hit the spot much better than some of the more pricey alternatives that we sampled.
Ok, so we’re running a bit low on restaurant recommendations. If any of you have any places that you would recommend then please feel free to leave a comment using the form below. If you can leave enough detail we’ll get any decent recommendations added to our list. Thank you!
do ye cater for celiac??