DUNIA

DUNIA in Can Picafort carries its double character in its name: Pizzería & Cafetería is what the sign on the Carretera Artà-Alcúdia says. Step inside and you quickly see that nothing about it is overstated. On one side a pizza oven is working; on the other, several kebab spits turn behind the counter, beef and chicken each on their own. That is unusual enough to surprise guests regularly. Most houses of this kind eventually pick a direction. DUNIA does not — and at one point the two halves actually meet: the pizza list carries two kebab pizzas, one with beef, one with chicken, with cheese, tomato and oregano. If you want to understand this place in a single dish, order one of those. The DUNIA menu: pizza, kebab and French tacos The pizzas stay deliberately plain. A margarita, a vegetarian one with onion and pepper, one with four cheeses, one with tuna and a marinera with prawns, squid and mussels — oregano goes on every one of them. The second half of the menu belongs to the spit. Kebab comes in flatbread with salad, tomato, onion, yogurt sauce and hot sauce, in beef, chicken or mixed, and as meat only if you prefer. The dürüm is the same thing, only rolled into a thin wheat flatbread instead of laid into bread. And with the kebab al plato everything goes onto the plate without bread, with chips alongside. If you eat plant-based, there is falafel with chips and salad. The tacos get a section of their own, and they are not meant in the Mexican sense. These are French tacos: wheat flatbread, folded, pressed flat and filled with chicken, with kefta of minced beef, or with both — and the chips go straight in with them. There is a seafood and fish version too. This kind of taco comes from France, from the Maghrebi kitchens of the suburbs, and it is a good deal rarer on Mallorca than the kebab. Burgers, small plates and the cafetería side Among the burgers, beef, chicken and a vegan version sit side by side, the last with a patty made from lentils — each with cheese, onion, tomato and salad, chips included. Next to them is what you order in between: chicken wings, fish croquettes, a chicken escalope with chips and salad, nuggets. The cafetería half is no footnote. In the morning there is a full breakfast with egg, mortadella, cheese, olives and olive oil, with tea or coffee. If you want less, you take a tostada: with tomato, with avocado, with cheese, with cheese and turkey, with tuna or with omelette, which also comes stuffed. That makes DUNIA for Can Picafort what a cafetería means on this island — a place where the day can begin, not only the evening. Why the place works in Can Picafort Can Picafort lives off the summer, and the Carretera Artà-Alcúdia is the axis everything here sits on. A house that gathers breakfast, pizza, kebab and something to take away under one roof fits that rhythm exactly — for families after a day on the beach as much as for anyone looking for something hot late on. The menu is bilingual throughout, Spanish and English, which in this town is simply practical. And the price level stays unfussy: DUNIA is avowedly an everyday place, not an evening programme.