Palma-Food-Guide: was essen, wo essen und wie man eine Tour bucht

Mallorca spent most of its history feeding itself from a limited larder, and the cooking still shows it. Pork gets preserved rather than eaten fresh, bread is baked without salt and used as a vehicle for everything else, vegetables turn up raw and chopped through the summer, and the sweet things lean on almonds and lard. It overlaps with mainland Spanish food without being it, and the moment that becomes obvious is usually the first time you order what you assume is a tapa and get something you have never seen. Our Gourmet Palma Food Tour exists to shorten that learning curve.

This is the overview: the dishes worth knowing, the parts of the city worth eating in, the markets, what to drink, and how to book something if you would rather be shown than left to work it out. Where a subject deserves more room than a section, we have written it up separately and linked through, starting with the Old Town tapas bars that most of this food actually turns up in.

What to Eat in Palma

1. Sobrassada

The island in a single ingredient. Minced pork, paprika, salt and pepper, cured slowly in a casing until the fat and meat break down into something soft enough to spread with a knife. It is not sliceable like chorizo and it is not supposed to be. The paprika does the colouring and much of the flavour, and the quality varies enormously with the pig.

You will meet it spread on toast, usually with a drizzle of honey, and warmed under a grill so the fat loosens. It also goes into croquettes, gets folded into rice, and turns up as an ensaimada filling. The premium version comes from the black Mallorcan pig, the porc negre, and is worth the difference if a menu offers the choice.

2. Pa amb oli

Bread with oil, which undersells it considerably. Dense Mallorcan bread, traditionally unsalted, rubbed with the cut face of a soft ramíret tomato until the pulp works into the crumb, then covered in olive oil and salt. That is the base, and on its own it is a snack. Add cured sheep cheese, jamón, sobrassada or anchovy and it becomes a meal.

It is also the fairest test of a kitchen anywhere on the island, because there is nothing to hide behind. Bad bread, tired tomatoes or cheap oil all show up immediately. Order it early in a meal at a bar you have not tried before and you will know within a mouthful whether to stay.

3. Ensaïmada

The spiral pastry every visitor carries home in a flat tied box. Thin dough laminated with pork lard, proved slowly, baked and dusted with icing sugar. The name comes from saïm, the word for lard, and that is not decorative etymology: the protected designation makes lard mandatory, and vegetable fat disqualifies the product entirely.

Only two versions are legally protected, the plain llisa and the one filled with candied pumpkin. Crema, chocolate and sobrassada versions are real and widely sold but sit outside the designation. Which bakeries still do it properly, what the rules actually say and how to get one home intact are covered in our guide to the best ensaimada in Palma.

4. Arròs brut

Literally dirty rice, named for its colour rather than anything else. A soupy rice cooked with rabbit, chicken, pork, snails, wild mushrooms and a heavy hand of spice, including cinnamon and clove, which is what marks it out from mainland rice dishes and gives it a faintly medieval quality.

It is winter food and inland food, traditionally cooked after a hunt, and it is served much wetter than a paella. The best versions are in the old cellers rather than in the seafront restaurants. If you see it on a menu in August, it is there for tourists.

5. Tumbet

The island’s vegetable dish and the one thing on this list a vegetarian can rely on. Layers of potato, aubergine and red pepper, each fried separately in olive oil, then stacked and baked under a plain tomato sauce. It is closer to a ratatouille in intent than in texture, since everything keeps its shape.

It appears as a side, as a main course, and topped with a fried egg or a piece of fish, and it is one of the few island staples that suits a table with a vegetarian at it. For the drinking side of the same larder, including the newer gin producers and how Palo and Herbes are made, see the Mallorca gin guide. Made properly it takes a long time, because frying each vegetable separately is the entire point and skipping it produces something muddy. A good tumbet is a reliable sign of a kitchen that is not cutting corners elsewhere.

6. Frit mallorquí

A fry-up of potato, red pepper, fennel and offal, usually lamb or pork liver and heart, cooked hard in oil with garlic. There is a seafood version, frit de peix, and a version made with the blood and organs of the pig after the annual slaughter. It is the most old-fashioned thing on this list and the one most likely to divide a table.

If offal is not your territory, the fish version is the way in and is genuinely excellent. If it is, order the lamb one in an inland restaurant rather than a tourist-facing kitchen, because this is a dish that suffers badly from being made cautiously.

7. Coques

Mallorcan flatbreads, closer to a pizza base without cheese, topped and baked in a hot oven. The classic is coca de trampó, spread with the raw chopped salad of tomato, green pepper and onion that gives it its name, dressed in oil and baked until the edges char. There are also versions with onion and goat cheese, with chard, and sweet ones with apricot.

They are bakery food and street food rather than restaurant food, sold by the slice from the forns, and they are the cheapest good lunch in Palma by a wide margin. Making them is one of the things guests learn on our Olivar Market Tour and Tapas Class, because the dough is forgiving and the topping changes with whatever the market has.

8. Gáto d’ametla

Almond cake, made with ground almonds instead of flour, lemon zest and a lot of eggs, which makes it naturally gluten free. Mallorca has grown almonds for centuries and the February blossom across the interior is one of the island’s set pieces, so this is a dessert with a landscape behind it.

It is dry on its own and it is meant to be. The standard service is a scoop of almond ice cream on top, which is how the old cellers send it out, and the combination is much better than either half. Order it after arròs brut and you have eaten a complete traditional Mallorcan meal.

Where to Eat in Palma

Palma is compact, and the difference between eating well and eating badly is mostly a matter of a few hundred metres. The tourist concentration runs along the Passeig del Born and the cathedral approach. Step out of that corridor in any direction and the quality rises while the price falls.

Area	What it is good for	Worth knowing
Old Town, around Santa Eulàlia	Traditional bodegas, barrel wine, cheap plates	The highest concentration of genuinely old bars in the city
Sa Gerreria	Neighbourhood bars, pinchos, craft beer	The old craftsmen’s quarter. Evenings only for most places
La Llotja	Sit-down tapas, seafood	Busier and pricier. Book at weekends
Santa Catalina	Modern kitchens, its own market, international food	Fifteen minutes west of the centre. Least traditional
Passeig del Born	People watching	Where the prices are highest and the cooking most cautious
Portixol and Molinar	Seafront fish, long lunches	A twenty-minute walk or short bus east along the bay

The timing matters as much as the location. Lunch is served from about 13:30 to 15:30 and most kitchens then close until 20:00 or later. Dinner service fills from 21:00. Arriving at 19:00 expecting a full menu is the single most common mistake visitors make, and Sunday and Monday closures are widespread. Our full rundown of individual bars, with what to order in each and what it costs, is in the Old Town tapas guide.

The Markets

The Mercat de l’Olivar is the one that matters. It is where the city actually shops, and where most of what ends up on a Palma bar counter passes through first: fish and shellfish landed that morning, whole cured hams, sobrassada from a dozen producers, sheep cheeses, and vegetables from the huertos of the interior. Several stallholders are the third or fourth generation of the same family in the same spot.

Go in the morning. Stalls start winding down from around 13:00 and by mid-afternoon the good ones have gone, leaving the bar counters that stay open later. Those counters are worth a stop in their own right, since eating oysters and a glass of wine at a market bar at eleven in the morning is a normal thing to do here.

Santa Catalina’s market is smaller, more gentrified and better for a relaxed lunch than for shopping. The Mercat de Pere Garau, east of the centre, is the least visited and the most local of the three. If you want to be shown how the Olivar works rather than wandering it, that is where our market tour starts, before moving to the kitchen to cook what has been bought.

What to Drink

Mallorca grows grape varieties that exist almost nowhere else, and several were recovered from the edge of extinction within the last few decades. Most bars will pour you something from Rioja unless you ask, so asking is the whole trick.

The wines are covered properly on our Mallorcan Wine Tasting, which works through five of these varieties with a winemaker’s account of how the recovered grapes were brought back. Coffee is its own tradition here too, with roasteries in Palma going back three quarters of a century.

How to Book a Food Tour in Palma

There are three broad formats in Palma and they suit different people. A walking food tour covers ground and gives you a shortlist you can return to alone. A market tour with a cooking class goes deeper on fewer things and sends you home able to make them. A seated tasting is the shortest commitment and the best option in the afternoon heat or between other plans.

Experience	Length	Group	From
Speciality Coffee Tasting	75 min	Max 10	€35
Mallorcan Gin Tasting	60 min	Max 10	€39
Wine Tasting with Tapas	90 min	Max 16	€49
Gourmet Palma Food Tour	4 hours	Max 10	€85
Market Tour & Tapas Class	4 hours	Max 8	€129

A few practical points whoever you book with. Group size is the variable that matters most, because a tasting for thirty is a lecture and a tasting for eight is a conversation. Ask where the tour actually goes, since some operators visit places that pay for the footfall rather than places worth eating in. Tell them about allergies and dietary requirements when you book rather than on the day, because tasting menus are prepared in advance and cannot always be changed on arrival. And in July and August, check whether the tour runs in the evening, as the middle of a Palma afternoon is no time to be walking between bars.

Our own experiences run from our room at Almacenes Casa Roca on Carrer dels Hostals, in the 1920s Art Deco building in the Old Town, apart from the market tour and food tour which start outside the Olivar. Private and corporate bookings can seat up to thirty-two guests, and the gift vouchers are valid for twelve months if you are buying for someone else.

Frequently Asked Questions