Es Taller Valldemossa

Es Taller sits where the lanes of Valldemossa's old centre give out: in a former car workshop on Carrer de Santiago Russiñol. The name says it plainly, and the house makes no secret of what it used to be. A cement floor, reused furniture, the old workshop sign still at the entrance. The garage before it closed when its owner retired, and the room stayed much as it was, only brighter. The cooking is done by Nicolás Gago Aubert, an Argentinian who lives in Valldemossa and is well liked among his neighbours. His menu has a Mallorcan core and a passport: almonds, sobrassada, figs and Mallorcan lamb stand next to Sri Lankan curry, papaya salad and Peruvian tuna tartare. Some of the vegetables grow a few metres from the table, in the restaurant's own garden behind the building. Es Taller Valldemossa: a menu with a passport The kitchen works with local, seasonal produce and seasons it with what the chef has carried home from other kitchens. Turkish sumac and Sichuan pepper belong to the repertoire as much as coconut milk, cassava flour or bisap, a hibiscus drink from Senegal. It comes in two formats: tapas to share, and larger portions for a course of your own. By his own account, there are two dishes Gago Aubert is not allowed to take off the menu. One is the ceviche, a crossing of a Peruvian and a Thai idea, with sturdy pieces of fish and seafood in tiger's milk on a bed of sweet potato. The other is the porcella, Mallorcan suckling pig, which he bones out, prepares in the French manner and finishes with Asian and Latin American accents: crackling skin, with pear and red wine. Around those, the menu shows how wide the arc runs. A Sri Lankan red lentil curry arrives with coconut sambol and papadums, raclette meets sobrassada, prawns and new potatoes, Iberian pork meets mole from Oaxaca, roquefort sauce and caramelised piquillo peppers. The scallop carpaccio is sliced paper-thin, briefly torched, brushed with sake and seasoned with Japanese shichimi. Grilled squid comes with fennel and fried yuca. At the end there is a dense dark chocolate and coconut tart with salt flakes and caramel ice cream. Nothing is meant to stand still: every ten to fifteen days the chef swaps out at least one dish. The chef: the long way round Nicolás Gago Aubert has worked in kitchens since his teens. He left Argentina as a young man, meant to stay for a single European season, because he was competing on a snowboard back then and cooking was how he paid for the travelling. The season turned into half a lifetime. He cooked in England, France, Thailand and Japan before staying in Spain: eleven years on Ibiza, then four on Mallorca in a shared project. Only after that came a house of his own in Valldemossa. Workshop, garden and terrace The dining room is open and bright, the light falling through large windows that look out onto the vegetable garden. Cement floor and reused furniture give the space its industrial pull, colourful artworks on the walls take the hardness out of it. Outside there is a terrace looking onto the garden and the Serra de Tramuntana. The house itself considers the evenings out there its best moment. The garden is not decoration: brimi, a milder, sweeter relative of broccoli, grows a few metres from the table and lands on it with pumpkin hummus. What does not come from the garden comes largely from producers nearby. At the bar stand two Mallorcan names any islander recognises at once: beer from the Adalt brewery and the soft drinks made by Puig. The wine list follows the same instinct, putting Mallorcan reds such as Son Crespí and Soca Rel next to Rioja, Ribera and one Argentinian wine, owed to the chef's origins. What to know before you go Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free are not special requests here but part of the menu. Symbols show which dish can be adapted, and some are vegan anyway, the curry among them. The room is small and well filled, by locals as much as by visitors, so booking a table is advisable. The menu is available in several languages, among them Catalan, Spanish, German, English and French.