BASTIAN CONTRARI

Bastian Contrari sits in Santa Catalina, but not in the part where the quarter is loudest. At the corner of Carrer de Villalonga and Carrer Cotoner it turns noticeably quieter than a few streets over by the market, and it is into exactly that corner that an Italian family has put its trattoria. The name is the Italian word for someone who swims against the current and holds a different view from everyone else. For an Italian restaurant on an island that has plenty of them, that is a statement. It is redeemed in the kitchen. What is cooked here is a mixture of Roman and Genoese tradition, and on Mallorca that is rare: most of the classics that pass for Italian here come from the south. Fresh pasta runs through the whole menu, with fish and meat alongside it. To open, and without any fuss, the house puts cracked Mallorcan olives and a warm focaccia straight from the oven on the table. What Bastian Contrari puts on the table Pasta is the core. Among the dishes that define the house are testaroli with pesto — one of the oldest pasta forms there is, baked like a crêpe on a flat iron plate and then cut into squares, thick enough for the sauce of pecorino, parmesan, basil, pine nuts, olive oil and garlic to cling to. Beside them stand pappardelle in a sauce of mixed mushrooms, garganelli with lamb ragù and artichokes, and fregola sarda with clams and calamari. If you want to know how far a single serving of pasta can carry, take the paccheri with prawns, guanciale, burrata and confit cherry tomatoes: the air-cured pork jowl brings the salt, the burrata melts into the hot pasta, the tomato supplies the sweetness. Without meat there are the quadrottoni of burrata and spinach with pine nuts, ricotta and tomato. From the rest of the menu: linguine in a seafood sauce, monkfish tail rolled in speck with a white wine sauce, mussels with tomato and basil, an avocado tartare with raisins and pine nuts, stuffed squid and ossobuco with risotto. The pinsa and how it differs from pizza The house calls itself a pinseria, and that is not just a label. A pinsa is oval rather than round, its dough carries soy and rice flour alongside wheat, and it proves considerably longer than a pizza dough. The result is thin and crisp, airy and open-crumbed inside rather than chewy. It is baked on the premises; the spicy version picks up a smoky note as well. One family, three stations Enea and Ilaria run the place together with their son, who works the room and talks guests through the dishes — in Italian, Spanish, English or French, depending on who is at the table. Before Palma the family had restaurants on the French Côte d'Azur and in Costa de la Calma in the south-west of the island; since 2020 the island capital has been their address. The wine list puts Mallorcan bottles next to Italian ones, there are cocktails, and at midday a set menu. The price bracket is down to earth — Bastian Contrari is a trattoria, not a house built for a grand entrance. Santa Catalina, in the quiet corner Santa Catalina was once the quarter of fishermen, rope makers and millers; the old windmills on Carrer de la Indústria and in Es Jonquet are still standing. It is now the densest restaurant district in Palma, with the Mercat de Santa Catalina at its centre, and the main streets fill up accordingly. Bastian Contrari sits a few corners away from them, between Carrer de la Indústria and the heart of the quarter, with a generous terrace outside. Inside it is the cosy corner the house describes itself as being. Better to book ahead — the place is well frequented.