COMAREA TAPAS & DRINKS

COMAREA TAPAS & DRINKS sits on Carrer del Quarter in S'Arenal, a few streets back from the seafront promenade of the Platja de Palma. Far enough from the beach line that you can hold a conversation at your table, close enough that the walk up from the water stays an easy one. The house describes its own cooking as tapas with soul, Mediterranean with character: traditional Mediterranean cuisine combined with new ideas, fresh, local and seasonal produce, plus cocktails and wines. Read the menu through and you quickly notice two lines running side by side. One is classically Spanish and surprisingly northern for a place on the Playa: Cecina de León, Tortilla de Betanzos, Pulpo a la gallega, Navajas, Zamburiñas. The other works with combinations you meet less often on this coast – tuna tartare with strawberries, salmon tartare with mango, a burrata salad with caramelised pear and Iberian ham. The tapas menu at COMAREA TAPAS & DRINKS The tapas section is the longest in the house and covers the Spanish repertoire broadly: Jamón pata negra and Cecina de León, Queso Manchego, Albóndigas, Croquetas caseras, Patatas bravas, Ensaladilla rusa, Pimientos de Padrón. Alongside them come Dátiles con Bacon, Chorizos al vino blanco, Champiñones salteados, Boquerones en vinagre, Parrillada de verduras and a Montadito de lomo. What stands out is how much room the sea gets. Pulpo appears three times over – Galician style, off the grill, and in a version with chorizo. Next to it stand Calamares and Chipirones a la andaluza, Gambas al ajillo, also available together with pulpo, Mejillones al vapor and fried Boquerones. The Cecina de León is the quiet counterweight: air-dried cured beef from the Spanish northwest, dark and firm, a speciality that rarely turns up on Mallorcan menus. From the sea, the rice pan and the grill The Pescados y Mariscos section shows that the house reaches beyond the tapas format. Lubina from the grill arrives with tumbet, the Mallorcan layered dish of potato, aubergine and pepper. Bacalao comes confited with gratinated alioli or straight off the plancha, joined by Dorada, Sepia, Salmón, Atún with sesame and by Navajas and Zamburiñas. Among the paellas you can choose between mixta, marisco and verdura – and the ciega, the blind paella, in which everything is freed of shell and bone beforehand, so nothing is left to pick out. On the meat side there are Entrecot de ternera, Ternera salteada, Lomo de cerdo, Escalope a la milanesa, Pechuga de pollo and Carrilleras al vino de Jerez, beef cheeks braised in sherry. The Maratón de Tapas One house peculiarity has a block of the menu to itself: the Maratón de Tapas. For groups from a minimum size, tapas and drinks run without limit across a set stretch of time – a format built for long evenings, and one you do better to announce in advance. Booking is worth it anyway: the house takes tables through its own reservation system, by telephone, via WhatsApp or through the form on its own site. The desserts stay deliberately plain and Spanish: Crema Catalana, Natillas, ice cream. The drinks side carries beer and wine by the glass alongside sangría, vermouth and cocktails, plus one white listed by name. S'Arenal away from the promenade S'Arenal forms the eastern end of the Platja de Palma, and most of its restaurants crowd along the beach line. COMAREA sits deliberately behind that, in the street grid around the Carretera Militar, where several tapas addresses lie close together. That is the difference: less passing trade off the promenade, more guests who come on purpose. The venue's own site runs in Spanish, English and German. On the Platja de Palma that is less a gesture of service than plain necessity.