Having had our bones shaken by the Mascleta, we were ready to sit down somewhere quiet and take things slowly for a while. We headed down Calle Poeta Querol with the post-Mascleta crowd and followed some of them up a small side-street. They turned into a buzzing restaurant (with a queue inside) and we carried on around the block. Here we found Meson Elisa, and were drawn in by the excellent value promised by the menu posted outside.
Meson Elisa turned out to be exactly what we were looking for. It has only five or six tables, and a couple of them were empty when we arrived. We both chose from the "daily special" menu that had drawn us in. Tina began with the macaroni with ham and tomato sauce, while I went for the "Valencian" salad (mainly lettuce, olives, and tuna). Both were "honest" rather than memorable.
We followed this up with prawn tortillas. Mine was delicious, and unlike any tortilla I have had before. It was more like a quiche in thickness, was really fluffy, and the small prawns were soft and tasty.
We ended our meal with oranges from the fruit basket. They were appropriately sweet and juicy, and made a healthy change from the thick chocolate and creamy takeaways we had been enjoying during our strolling around town.
Most of our fellow-patrons ate their meals at a faster pace than we did. We enjoyed being unhurried, and were also distracted by the TV news programme that was dominated by Fallas events. It included a segment on the Mascleta, and we learned that the firecrackers had registered an "orange" 114 decibels on the meter. I can’t imagine how loud it has to be to warrant a "red".
Like most of our Valencia experiences, we found that English is not spoken at Meson Elisa. However friendly Elisa was also very patient, and we were able to communicate enough with our pidgin Italian. In general, we were surprised just how far we were able to get with a little Italian in Valencia. This was an unexpected bonus.
We enjoyed our meal at Meson Elisa. While it wasn’t as buzzing as its near neighbours, service was friendly, the food was good, and the meal was very good value (EUR19 for the two of us, including a beer and bottled water).