Hungry Gastro Food Bar

Hungry Gastro Food Bar sits on a short side street in the middle of Palma, a few paces east of Plaça d'Espanya and within walking distance of the Mercat de l'Olivar. From the outside it is easy to miss. Inside there are only a handful of tables and a menu short enough to read standing up — and that is rather the point: this is not a house that offers everything, but one that offers what the two brothers behind it can actually do. A family business is how they describe themselves, and international cooking is how they describe the kitchen. What reaches the table has a Mediterranean footing and reaches out from there without committing to any one national cuisine. The owners name three pillars themselves: fish, house-made pasta and matured beef. The kitchen at Hungry Gastro Food Bar On the meat side the chuletón leads, a cut of Simmental Fleckvieh, matured and seasoned with smoked salt. It is listed for two, which makes it more of an arrangement than an order. Beside it stands a grilled white veal tenderloin with confit onion, a splash of Pedro Ximénez and house-cut chips. On the fish side tuna leads, and it appears twice. Once raw as a tartare with avocado, shallots and a soy and sesame dressing. Once hard-seared under a sesame crust, with jasmine rice and beetroot and a lime and coriander cream. The salmon is glazed with honey and comes with roast potatoes in garlic butter, grilled green asparagus and a sauce of olive oil, thyme and lemon. Pasta here is not an afterthought: tagliatelle with spinach, pine nuts, fresh basil, grilled chicken breast and parmesan. Among the starters you will find a carpaccio of roasted duck magret with cashews and a house-reduced orange sauce, a hand-cut steak tartare in the French manner, grilled halloumi with a spicy tomato jam, and grilled green asparagus with feta. The outlier on the card is called palomitas de pollo: fried chicken breast in a popcorn coating, with a broccoli salad alongside. You can eat well here without meat, and without needing a separate chapter for it. The halloumi, the asparagus with feta and the house salad with pink tomato, avocado and radish carry an evening; among the sides come plancha-grilled vegetables, sweet potato fries, a mixed salad and garlic bread. Sweet things from their own kitchen The desserts are listed as house-made and stay deliberately plain. There is a light no-bake cheesecake with a blueberry topping, a white chocolate mousse with mango coulis and almonds, a lemon sorbet with mint and cold vodka, changing ice creams and an apple tart in the crumble style with vanilla ice cream and a forest-fruit sauce. No constructions, no show — sweet things that match the rest. The room and the reservation The dining room is small, and the house makes no secret of it. Booking is therefore the more reliable route than trying your luck at the door. Large parties do not work here: tables are not pushed together, and a group that books separately will be seated separately. There is no space for pushchairs between the tables, and the house keeps no high chairs — with small children you are better off planning differently. What you get in return, if that suits you, is the other side of the same coin: a place where the owners are in the room themselves, a menu you can take in at a glance, and produce that has visibly not been economised on. Between Plaça d'Espanya and the Mercat de l'Olivar Carrer d'Enric Alzamora is one of those short streets in the Centre district that you only enter if you have a destination. That is precisely its appeal: you are in the middle of Palma but off the through route. To the west lies Plaça d'Espanya, with the Estació Intermodal beneath it gathering the metro, the trains and the intercity buses; to the south-west begins the quarter around the Mercat de l'Olivar, Palma's great market hall. Both are a few minutes away on foot, and both explain why so many small kitchens hold their ground in this corner.