Eat Early
It’s typically a slow start on the largest of the Balearics so put your intermittent fasting hat on and skip the calories until lunchtime, when there is a plethora of culinary treats to be had on the south coast. Interestingly, many Mallorcans start the day with sobrasada – a local cured sausage – spread on toast with honey. If you’re desperate for a bite and a coffee, head to Cassai Gran Café, a charming little café-restaurant in Ses Salines that’s open from 11am to midnight and serves some of the best arabica on the island. You’ll probably end up staying for lunch, which is just as well because the tapas menu is sublime, and the fideuá de pescado y marisco (a noodle-based version of paella) is to die for. But don’t expire just yet. Cassai has a sister establishment, Cassai Beach House, which overlooks the island of Cabrera and is a cracking place for small groups. For a splash-out lunch, head to the incredible Cap Rocat hotel (see below), perched on a bluff overlooking the Bay of Palma. Here you’ll find the Sea Club, a relaxed alfresco restaurant of extremely good quality and with sea views to match. The red prawn ceviche is the perfect introduction to the glorious simplicity of the local food, followed by sea bass cooked Mallorcan style (basically, baked in a sarcophagus of vegetables). Divine.
Eat Late
The closure of Es Moli de’n Bou, Mallorca’s first restaurant to achieve a Michelin star, has not dimmed the island’s gastronomic ambition. If anything, the quality of cuisine has improved significantly over recent years. While some of the movers and shakers are, naturally, based in Palma, there are plenty of other top-notch culinary experiences to be had elsewhere on the south coast. Ocre Restaurant and Bar is one such place, set in the former wine cellar of the stunning Can Ferrereta hotel (see below) in the quaint town of Santanyí. Punctuated by original wood beams and stone arches (one of which is adorned with 17th-century graffiti), the restaurant’s cuisine is overseen by head chef Alvar Albaladejo, who uses local seasonal produce to create mouthwatering dishes. You have to try the aforementioned sobrasada de cerdo negro a la brasa, while the grilled scallop rice with octopus and gratinated alioli is epic, as is the garlic breath thereafter. Also in Santanyí is Restaurant Laudat, which has a beautiful and convivial enclosed terrace that creates a wonderful dining atmosphere. The grilled turbot fillet is one of the highlights of the menu, while the house Laudat wines are also excellent.
Palma deserves a guide all on its own so we’ll just dip in quickly to suggest visits to Bistro Esencia in the quirky area of Santa Catalina and La Rosa Vermutería, a peerless, noisy tapas bar located in the very centre of the capital. The former is owned and run by an Italian couple, with the husband on the hobs and the wife front of house and serving. The premises are petite and unassuming but the food is super inventive. Opt for the tasting menu with paired Mallorcan wines – you will not be disappointed. La Rosa Vermutería is everything you want from a tapas bar, with attentive staff more than willing to help you navigate the local dishes amid a cacophony of happy diners. Go in hungry, and take your time.
Drink
Hedonistic daylight drinkers looking to get the day started right should carry on through lunch at Cassai Gran Café (see above), where the aperitivos are many and the cocktails are flowing, especially the excellent mojitos (the mango version is surreptitiously deadly). Most of the best watering holes, of course, are in the capital. Bar Abaco on Calle Sant Joan is one of the strangest places you’re ever likely to get sozzled in. It’s housed in a converted mansion building and decorated in the classical Baroque style, with rooms adorned with period furniture and antiques. Ceramics, tapestries, bronzes, rugs and a unique collection of paintings, engravings and sculptures collectively contribute to a unique atmosphere, while the impressive cocktail list of mostly classics does its best to transport you back to the 17th century. If it’s all too weird, head straight for the flower-filled courtyard. Nola in Santa Catalina feels much more like a ‘Shoreditch’ dive bar, with a lively vibe and a cracking little courtyard, the walls of which are adorned with impressive graffiti art. I can’t tell you the extent of the cocktail list because after two enormous mojitos, making notes was the least of my concerns.
If you stay on street level, you’ll probably miss most of Palma’s best bars, since they tend to reside on the rooftops of the city’s luxury hotels. Our favourite is at the zenith of the Sant Francesc Hotel Singular. Its rooftop bar offers a peerless view of Palma’s historic neighbourhoods. For harbour views, cracking sushi and a DJ providing some soulful house ambience, head to the Tree House by UM in Moll Vell.
Shop
One of the best markets on the island happens every Saturday in Santanyí, a small but perfectly formed stone town in the southeast of the island. Get there early, say 9am, to avoid the heat and the crowds. You’ll find a vast number of local traders, artisans and purveyors of local foods, together with all of your typical clothing vendors selling bohemian-style dresses. Also here is the Santanyí shop of ceramics factory Terra Cuita. The factory itself is located in the town of Pórtol, Marratxí, and its owners are a family of artisans who have been working with clay and pottery for five generations. They produce stunning clay pots, pans, casseroles, fruit dishes, hot pots, oil bottles, jars, jugs, ladles – you name it – all made with earth from Pórtol.
Back in Palma, one of the best and oldest markets to seek out happens in Santa Catalina, originally a small fishing village next to the port of Palma. From 7am until 5pm from Monday to Saturday, this market is a smorgasbord of local foods and delicacies, and it’s the absolute best place to buy fish, seafood and charcuterie, including Mallorca’s unique sobrasada. Meanwhile, if you’re on the hunt for a pair of fine handmade shoes, you are in for a treat because Mallorca is Spain’s epicentre of shoemaking, with Carmina on Carrer de la Unió being the very best spot. This brilliant atelier, which now has stores in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and New York, is famed for its exquisite Goodyear-welted shoes and its made-to-order offering. Although they’re not cheap, you’ll be investing in these shoes for life.
Stay
If you’re looking for a quiet rural location with a family-run vibe and outstanding understated local cuisine that won’t break the bank, then Sa Galera, just a 15-minute drive from Santanyí, is an excellent option. Off the beaten track (after a four-hour Easyjet delay, this writer missed the turning twice), Hotel Sa Galera is perfectly situated for guests to explore the many stunning calas (coves) of the southeast coast. Part of a historic estate, originally an important site in one of the seven fiefdoms of the Kingdom of Mallorca, its red stone buildings once housed the island’s cavalry garrison. The same family has owned the estate since 1850, harvesting more than 5000 almond trees, while also housing one of the most important centres for the breeding of pure Mallorcan horses. With only 20 guest rooms, all tastefully appointed in a traditional Mallorcan country style, it’s an oasis of tranquillity. Whoever’s in the kitchen is working magic too – the king prawns cooked in sobrasada with honey was one of the best dishes I had anywhere on the island.
Cap Rocat, overlooking the Bay of Palma, is entirely different. Architecturally exquisite, its contemporary splendour is housed in a converted stone fortress that sits in the middle of a 30-hectare nature reserve with 2km of marine protected coast. Every little nook, walkway and corner is a vignette of aesthetic excellence, carved out of sandstone and heady with the fragrances of jasmine, rosemary, chamomile and pine. Words don’t really do this place justice. The main restaurant, La Fortaleza, is award-winning, of course. Cap Rocat is so swanky it even hosts its own classical music festival, curated by Ilias Tzempetonidis, artistic director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
Back in Santanyí, the pick of accommodation is surely Can Ferrereta, a 17th-century farmhouse hidden away in the town. Restored and completely transformed by the Soldevila-Ferrer family (who also overhauled Palma’s Hotel Sant Francesc Singular) into a contemporary temple of Balearic style, its rough mortared walls are adorned with artworks by the likes of Joan Miró, while around the hotel trinkets, sculptures and designer furniture by Piero Lissoni and Hans Wegner guarantee a thoroughly indulgent lounge life. Its Sa Calma spa is outstanding too, with three large booths for treatments, a 10m sliver of heated indoor pool with a hydromassage area, sauna, hammam, double sensation shower and relaxation area, and an outdoor area for yoga and meditation.
Do
If you’re staying in the south, then you have one of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful coastlines on your doorstep, from the huge expanse of white sand at Es Trenc to the many calas that carve their way all along the eastern coast to the north of the island. If you go in high season, be prepared for a mass of bodies. Mallorca gets busy, and unfortunately there are no more ‘secret coves’, so you’d do well to go to the coast early or late in the day, or even better, just out of season. Cala Llombards with its Instagrammable fishermen’s huts is a highlight, but if you have a car it’s worth visiting the least accessible calas for the best experiences. And if you are visiting Es Trenc, walk for at least 20 minutes away from the entrance in order to get a tranquil spot to yourself.
With wheels at your disposal, you’d do well to visit the Tramuntana mountains, particularly the bohemian towns of Sóller and Deià, both of which have fallen on their feet since the Belmond group opened its La Residencia in the latter. The Tramuntana offer some epic hiking if you’re of that persuasion, or much less effort is the wood-panelled train to Sóller, which winds a very picturesque path through the Sierra de Alfabia range. Mallorca isn’t short of stunning architecture but nothing eclipses the gothic masterpiece that is the Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma, aka Le Seu. It’s one of the first sights you see when driving east out of Palma. Construction started in the 13th century and it was subsequently modified by Antoni Gaudí in the 20th. Finally, head to Es Baluard in Palma, a 16th-century former fort that is now home to the island’s most impressive modern and contemporary art collections, featuring more than 700 artists, many of whom are from the Balearics, as well as works by the likes of Picasso, Giacometti and Gauguin.
Ryan Thompson is a UK-based menswear and lifestyle writer, whose work has appeared in, among others, the Financial Times, Mr Porter, The Rake and Ape to Gentleman
