Why the Original Paella Emoji Was So Controversial That It Had to Be Changed

Spanish-American chef José Andrés has a full plate. He's launched and led 16 restaurants. He founded the non-profit World Central Kitchen, and since 2010, he and his team have since served more than 60 million fresh meals to people in the wake of natural disasters and humanitarian crises around the world. Between it all, he took up the cause of lobbying for an emoji to represent a traditional Spanish dish: paella.

Not only is Andrés Spain's unofficial culinary ambassador to the U.S. (he's known for bringing Spanish fine dining stateside) but he also has connections everywhere, including Silicon Valley. In other words, Andrés was the right man for the job. Yet, getting an accurate paella emoji on our phones almost didn't happen. Here's why tech giants like Apple and Facebook had to change the original paella emoji.

Authentic Paella

Paella is a rice-based dish made to feed a crowd. The name actually refers to the wide, flat carbon steel pan that it traditionally cooks in. It began as a humble meal to feed hungry farmers and herders in the fields of Valencia and Alicante, Spain.

Paella calls for bomba or Calasparra rice, which expands up to three times its dried size as it absorbs the liquid it simmers in. That liquid is often infused with spices like saffron, garlic, rosemary, and pimento peppers. Soffrito (sauteed tomatoes, onions, and peppers) also adds flavor. The meat or seafood used in paella varies regionally and includes chicken, rabbit, snails, pork, shrimp, clams, mussels, squid, and more.

Authentic paella Valenciana consists of chicken and rabbit, olive oil, tomato, garrafó (lima beans), green beans, salt, and a touch of rosemary to finish it off, Andrés told host Sabrina Medora on Homemade, the Allrecipes podcast. Saffron, snails, and artichokes may also be part of the dish, he said.

The Paella Emoji Controversy

Andrés insists that if you're going to learn how to make paella, your method should be authentic, whether it's from a Spanish chef's cookbook, a Spanish chef on YouTube, or a website called Wikipaella, he told Medora.

So, when a friend, Wikipaella co-founder Guillermo Navarro, called on Andrés to help create an emoji honoring the dish, the chef jumped on board. The idea for a paella emoji began when Navarro, an advertising executive, envisioned it as a creative way to promote a brand of Spanish rice.

Andrés and Navarro worked on the emoji project for three or four years, Andrés said. The goal was to represent the most traditional version of the dish, paella Valenciana.

It was up to Andrés to reach the emoji overlords in Silicon Valley, but he soon found that it would be a difficult process. Andrés chatted with the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that meets to approve emoji applications.

"They say 'OK, we will take a look at the paella emoji.' But that's it," he told Food & Wine. "You can't just pay these guys off. You have to convince them that paella emoji is something that people will really use, that is really important."

But as soon as Andrés and Navarro looped in paella fans, especially passionate Spaniards, the hashtag #PaellaEmoji became a trending topic on Twitter. And Unicode took notice. In December 2016, the paella emoji was released.

For its biggest advocates, however, the emoji looked entirely wrong. It featured shrimp, mussels, and peas, none of the ingredients in paella Valenciana. Again, paella-loving people took to Twitter, calling out the inauthentic ingredients and petitioning for a better representation.

Meanwhile, Navarro went back to the drawing board — actually, to Japan — and met with the inventor of the very first emoji to create the paella emoji 2.0.

In April 2017, the new and improved paella emoji debuted, featuring chicken, garrafó, green beans, and an unexpected garnish: lemon. It also leaves some key ingredients like rabbit up to the imagination. Nevertheless, Andrés, Navarro, and their fellow paella purists didn't cause a stir.

In fact, Andrés said he was very happy with the emoji, and others shared his sentiment. "In Spain, a lot of people eat paella," Navarro said. "So, people use it a lot. They put 'Let's Party!' and the paella emoji."

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