Il Gambero

Il Gambero sits in the middle of Llucmajor, on Plaça Espanya — the town's main square, where a good part of daily life comes together. It is an Italian seafood restaurant, and that is not a turn of phrase here but the premise the whole menu is built on. Llucmajor is an inland town in the south of Mallorca, a good ten kilometres from the nearest beach. Anyone wanting fish on the island usually drives to the coast — Il Gambero brings it inland instead. Fish and shellfish arrive every morning straight from the lonja, and the pasta is made in house daily. The menu is deliberately short and works like a daily selection: what was bought in the morning decides what is possible later. That also explains why you find dishes here that are not the first thing you would expect in an Italian restaurant. The kitchen at Il Gambero On the pasta side there are egg fettuccine with truffle cream, freshly shaved truffle and a crisp parmesan tuile. Alongside them, spaghetti with true vongole, parsley and olive oil, creamy tagliatelle, and gnocchi alla Norma with house-preserved aubergine in tomatoes, Pecorino Romano and fresh herbs. From the same section comes a beetroot risotto with goat's cheese cream, walnuts and lime chives. From the sea come fried cod with sweet-and-sour red onions, carrot cream and cumin seeds, and octopus in two versions — one with confit cherry tomatoes, fried leek and a light coconut foam, one off the plancha on rocket, with orange sweet potato purée and citrus zest. To start there is a beetroot carpaccio with white onion, walnuts, capers and grated orange, a lentil soup with chicken skewers, a mixed salad of seasonal vegetables, and white asparagus with Iberian ham. Sweet things run to a semifreddo with raspberries, blackberries, chocolate and pistachio — and to the Cannolo Siciliano, the house classic. Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free In a fish house that is not a given, but here it is explicitly part of the concept: Il Gambero runs vegan and gluten-free dishes as a line of their own. A look at the menu makes it plausible why that holds up — beetroot, aubergine, asparagus and lentils carry dishes of their own here rather than serving as side orders. The terrace on Plaça Espanya The square is pedestrianised and the terrace stands right on it. That is the house's real argument: you are not sitting beside a road but on the square where everything in Llucmajor converges anyway, watching the evening happen. Inside, the room is smaller and gets correspondingly lively on busy nights. Before you go Booking is worth it, and the house asks for it outright — weekends fill up. You can do it by phone or through the booking form on its own website. Il Gambero sits in the middle price bracket; the effort visibly goes into the sourcing and the pasta rather than into staging. And if you are wondering why an Italian house carries this name: gambero is the prawn — for a place that defines itself through fish first, that is a statement of intent rather than decoration.