La nueva burguesa

La Nueva Burguesa is a small burger house on Carrer de Sant Magí, in the middle of Palma's Santa Catalina quarter. The place has been there since 2017, opened by two young hosts, one Spanish and one German, and it is still run by the owners themselves. The room holds barely more than a dozen tables: wooden furniture, exposed ceiling beams, low-hanging lamps. There is not much more space than that, so it is better to ring ahead and have a table put aside — booking here happens on the phone, not through a form. Even the logo is drawn by hand: a circle, a map pin with a burger inside it, the name of the quarter underneath. For this house Santa Catalina is part of the identity, not just part of the address. The burgers at La Nueva Burguesa carry first names Every burger on the card is named after a person: Luis, Timm, Matias, Aron, Nico, Maya, Luciano, Biel, and La Scaloneta alongside them. The names come from the family and the circle of friends, and when a friend is honoured, he gets a burger of his own. It sorts the menu better than any category could: the Aron is the one with nachos, guacamole and jalapeños, the Luciano the one with goat cheese, caramelised red onions and truffle mayonnaise, the Matias the one with lime and ginger mayonnaise and house barbecue sauce. The beef is Galician throughout, and the kitchen asks how you want it — rare, medium, medium well or well done, set on the card as a hand-lettered speech bubble. The bread is fixed per burger too, white, brown or vegan; gluten-free bread with seeds stands beside it as an option. Three chicken burgers run alongside the beef, among them the Julian with gorgonzola cream, truffle mayonnaise and basil pesto, and the Estelita with garam masala chicken, fruit chutney and sour cream. Sauces made in house, sides with their own names The house makes its sauces itself, including the ones that elsewhere come out of a catering tub: ketchup and barbecue sauce as much as allioli, cocktail sauce, guacamole, hummus and a whole row of mayonnaises — truffle, chipotle, chimichurri, wasabi, honey wasabi, lime and ginger. You can order them separately, which turns a manageable card into a large one rather quickly. Among the sides, the patatas burguesas and the nachos burgueses are the house pieces, fries and nachos respectively with chili con carne and cheese; beside them sweet potato fries, coleslaw and a mixed salad. The meat-free side is no afterthought: Ana comes with falafel, Andrea with organic seitan, both on vegan bread, Sol and Facundo with halloumi. Vegan cheese sits among the extras, and the dessert list is short but real — a banoffee belongs to it. A drinks list that leans towards the island For a burger address the drinks list is remarkably well sorted. The gin and tonic section is arranged by country of origin and starts on Mallorca, before Menorca, Catalonia, Galicia and then England, Germany and the rest follow. Among the house mule drinks, a Mallorca Mule made with Mallorcan gin stands next to the classic Moscow Mule. The beers include Mallorcan labels, gluten-free and alcohol-free bottles, the wines a Vi de la Terra Mallorca in white and red, with hierbas as a digestif and organic infusions. The whole card is hand-lettered and illustrated, down to a drawn row of townhouses along the bottom edge that looks like the street outside the door. In the local press the house turns up in the lists of Palma's good burger addresses, without ever having made much noise about it — which suits a place that names its burgers after friends.