Let me tell you about a rule.

I lived in Valencia for a few years, and during that time I learned, through observation, through embarrassment, through eating a lot of paella, that the dish has exactly one acceptable occasion: Sunday lunch. Made to order, over orange-wood fire, in a flat pan wide enough to embarrass your largest skillet. Eaten at a table with people you like, at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, in no particular hurry.

Order paella at dinner in Valencia and you will receive it. The waiter will not say anything. But something will pass across their face.

This matters beyond paella. It's a useful principle for eating well anywhere: the best version of any dish exists in a specific context, and the context is usually the one that tourists are least likely to find themselves in. The right time, the right place, the right reason to be eating it.

The best paella I've had in Valencia was at Arrocería Maribel near the rice fields south of the city. It came to the table in the pan. It had the socarrat, the slightly crispy layer of rice at the bottom that tells you the heat was right and the cook was paying attention. It is worth the trip, but if you are concerned about transportation, a decent beachside alternative closer to the city is La Brisa.  Bonus: it is a locals beach.

The worst paella I've had in Valencia was served in thirty minutes at a restaurant near the cathedral. It was fine. It was also, in the way that matters, not paella at all.

The broader principle:

Every place has a version of the paella rule, a dish or drink that has a right context and a tourist-facing approximation of that context. Part of traveling well is learning which one you're eating.

A few I've encountered:

Agua de Valencia: Valencia's own cocktail (cava, orange juice, vodka, gin) is one of the genuinely great drinks of the world when you're sitting outside at bars called Negrito or Infanta at around 10pm with nowhere to be. It is fine in other contexts. It is transcendent in that one.

Pho in Vietnam: A breakfast dish. Eating it at dinner isn't wrong, exactly, but you're missing something about why it exists and what it does.

Cacio e Pepe in Rome: Available everywhere in Rome. Worth eating everywhere in Rome. But there's a specific place in Trastevere where I always order the Gricia instead, which is Cacio e Pepe with crispy guanciale, because that's the dish that place has made its own. Ordering the famous thing at a place that does the less-famous thing better is a mistake I've made enough times to have learned from it.

The takeaway: Before you order the thing everyone orders, it's worth asking what this place does that nowhere else does quite right.

I'll keep answering that question for you, city by city.

Hit reply: What's a dish you've had in its right context that ruined every other version for you? I'm collecting these.