Bens d´Avall

As soon as you sit down to your table here, on the terrace with magnificent views of the Mediterranean (reserve next to the railing), Benito Vicens receives his clients by starting them off with a classic gastronomic landscape of Spain: our "Pa amb oli"; a game starred bread and olives. What does this mean? Well, it means that we find ourselves before a deeply rooted cuisine, with a clearly identifiable Majorcan accent. It is not in vain that we are before the most authentic advocate of Balearic haute-cuisine, a style interpreted with personality, accentuating the substance and charm of the dishes. He recreates conventional flavors and recipes with an unequivocal modern, pragmatic touch. An evolution destined for a cosmopolitan clientele with curious palates.

Except for one classic of the house that experiments some incidental changes (the Soller red prawn carpaccio with arugula salad, escarole, spring shoots and pine nuts with homemade basil pesto, gelatinized sea water and shavings of Majorcan cured cheese – a majestic salad, bursting with a freshness and complexity which preserve the immaculate nature of all the elements, including the delicate prawns, fresh and flattened instead of frozen and sliced), the menu completely changes every year. Red prawns, mahi-mahi, red mullet, scorpion fish, lamb, suckling pig… prepared by an unrestrained, contemplative imagination, exuberant in nuances. Aside from the dish cited above, the ideal feast here must include the wonderful Majorcan soups – dried bread crumbs infused with a profound flavor of the sea – with raw and cooked vegetables, pickled rock samphire, a perfect guinea hen terrine, medallions and lobster claws; a wild gastronomic venture that has everything and more. The oysters with punzu sauce – a flavorful broth of smoked bonito – and ice-blended Chablis, the roast lamb with meadow aromas, celeriac-pear couscous, sheep milk gnocchi coulant, spiced juice and blue foot mushrooms. Needless to say, the chef puts all his heart into each construction. Another glaring temptation: small suckling pig, crisp and buttery, perfumed with orange, juniper and enriched with apple and pink pepper, crisp salsifies, as well as a reduction of its own juices.