After my wife and I married in 2017, life moved fast. We found a place to put down roots and started a family with three kids. Like most people in their 20s and 30s, we found it difficult to make new friends, especially in a new community.
We didn’t want to be part of the loneliness statistic among adults, so we set out to find our own way to be intentional about new relationships.
Since 2023, we’ve taken extended stays in Spain to reconnect with our ancestral roots, visit family, and appreciate the country. My wife and I worked hard to make friends in West Palm Beach, Fla., and later, when we moved further north to Port St. Lucie.
But it wasn’t until our trip to the Comunitat Valenciana, often over long lunches of paella, that we finally started making close friends more naturally.
I fell in love with paella in Spain
Growing up in South Florida, I had many versions of paella, but I had never had an authentic one. While in Spain, we loved the dish so much that we had it a few times a week and then walked it off along the boardwalks of towns like Altea and Calpe.
Each time, I snapped pictures, took notes, and studied the dish.
When I came home, I made plenty of mistakes. For example, I broke rules by adding herbs to my sofrito, which changed the dish and color entirely. I learned my lesson and worked to replicate what I first tasted.
Through experimentation, videos, and more visits to Spain, I finally reached a version close to what we experienced. To this day, it’s still not perfect. I have to adjust for local ingredients, guests’ palates, and their expectations — but as a continuous student, it’s been a wonderful journey.
Paella has been a great connector for us
Not everyone has a big boat or lots of land that easily breaks the ice and draws people in for that first meetup. But finding a dish that’s unique and uncommon in your area can be the next best thing — or even better.
For example, I had passed many people in our community, but we never really planned anything — life always seemed too busy. But when we mentioned paella, many people changed their schedules to come.
We made new friends, hosted old ones, and even held a community pop-up in our driveway to meet new people. That day, passersby visited us and tried a small plate.
Courtesy of John Paul Hernandez
While having a dish like paella gave everyone an excuse to meet, that was only part of it. Talking about the paella, eating it slowly, and spending hours together made the experience special and memorable — this experience, called the sobremesa, is a wonderful Spanish tradition.
The dish itself gave us and our guests a subject to discuss too, like comparing different kinds of paella, like Paella Valenciana, Mixta, and de Mariscos — plus similar rice dishes that don’t traditionally earn the title of paella, like Arroz Negro (black rice with squid or cuttlefish and its ink).
We tested sobremesa for paella with our next-door neighbor. We ate and got to know each other while the kids played in the backyard. That event cemented a strong relationship. We now help each other weekly, share food often, and join community events together. With another family, we still talk about our meetup more than a year later. Those conversations and laughs are still part of our friendship.
Loneliness doesn’t have to be the only option for parents
Eventually, other acquaintances reached out, curious after seeing posts from previous gatherings. While we’re still on a journey to get other dishes right in other regions we’ve visited, like salmorejo from Andalucía and a variety of pintxos from the País Vasco (Basque Country), having one thing to share, like paella, has been the difference in making new friends.
These moments made us realize that loneliness, or the difficulty of making friends, doesn’t have to be permanent. Finding a dish, or anything you love to do and share with others, can be the perfect icebreaker.
John Paul Hernandez is a marketing writer for tech companies. He’s based in Florida’s Treasure Coast. Connect with him on LinkedIn or his website.
