Can Gelat

Can Gelat sits a few steps off the Plaça Major in Santanyí, down a narrow lane in the old centre. From outside it is an unremarkable town house built of the golden marès sandstone that almost everything here is made of. Inside there is a counter with the day's tapas laid out behind glass, and an interior courtyard where on a good day every seat is taken. You do not order from a menu, you order at the counter. You look at what is there, point at it, and then decide whether you want the small or the large portion. Both are generous. That sounds like a detail, but it changes the whole visit: you eat what catches your eye, not what you think you recognise on a printed list. What the house is after is narrow and clear. Traditional, home-cooked food on a Mallorcan and Spanish base, with no concept, no foams and no translation into something touristic. Ask around Santanyí where the people from the village eat at midday and there is a fair chance you will be sent here. What sits on the counter at Can Gelat The display changes, but a core keeps coming back. The lengua estofada, beef tongue braised with capers, is the dish experienced guests point at first. Beside it lie piquillo peppers stuffed with salt cod, a thick tortilla, sharply seasoned calamares, albóndigas, arroz negro and patatas bravas. There is also a Mediterranean side line you would not necessarily expect at a tapas counter: caponata, a house-made guacamole and a lasagne that guests mention strikingly often, the spinach one as much as the meat one. Braised pork cheeks turn up in the display too. The daily-dish board Alongside the tapas the house keeps a board of daily dishes that turns over through the week. On it is the kind of cooking Mallorca does at home when there is time for it: salt cod with white beans, cuttlefish braised in its own stock, a paella marinera, grilled vegetables with romesco, pork fillet with a potato cake, a stuffed chicken with figs and goat's cheese, a frito de marisco. Because the board rotates and the popular things go early, it pays not to arrive last. On market days that goes double. Santanyí around it Santanyí is one of those south-eastern towns that has kept its character even though everybody knows about it by now. The warm marès sandstone the village is built from also sits in the Llotja in Palma. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the market fills the Plaça Major, the lanes are packed and every terrace is taken; on the quiet days in between you notice how small the place actually is. Can Gelat gains from both. On market days it is the obvious stop after the shopping; on quiet days it is a village counter with a cortado and a conversation. That the room is not filled only with visitors becomes clear quickly enough from the way people talk in it. Sweet things, coffee and a drink after Among the desserts it is above all the tarta de mango that stands out, praised unusually often in guest comments, alongside a crema catalana. The house also makes ice cream, which guests measure against Italian standards — not a given for a village counter. The coffee is sound, and there is mixing going on behind the bar as well: cocktails are explicitly part of the offer. A good deal of it can be taken away too, which on market days may be the simpler solution.