La Tapera

La Tapera sits on Avinguda de Joan Miró, a good four kilometres west of Palma's old town, where the city thins out towards Sant Agustí and Cala Major and the row of houses starts to fall away towards the sea. This is not an address you stumble on while wandering the old quarter. People who come here come on purpose — or because, as the house motto has it, they saw a light and walked in. The kitchen describes itself as Andean-Mediterranean fusion, and for once that is not an empty phrase. The menu carries the Spanish classics you expect in a tapas house, but alongside them sit dishes whose origins lie a few thousand kilometres further west: empanadas, cassava, milanesas. The two lines do not simply run side by side, they cross — Mallorcan sobrassada on one side, South American root cooking on the other. What La Tapera puts on the table The patatas bravas here are not a box to tick but a piece of work: the house uses patatones from Sa Pobla, potatoes from the market-garden belt in the north of the island, and later reworked the recipe to get them crisper. At TaPalma, the city-wide tapas route, the place entered with exactly these bravas — and beside them a second tapa showing its Mallorcan side: toasted pan de cristal with sobrassada, honey and black pepper. From the other direction come the empanadas and the milanesa de berenjena with sweet potato purée, a breaded aubergine cutlet the house itself counts among the most praised dishes on its menu. Add cassava baked golden in the oven and a salad of spinach and egg — the vegetable side is not treated as a garnish here. From the Spanish side come gambas al ajillo, mussels, fried chipirones and pan con tomate. The charcoal oven The third element beside the Andes and the Mediterranean is fire. La Tapera works with a charcoal oven, and it shapes the menu more strongly than you would guess from a tapas address: fish, meat and vegetables get the roasting aromas and the dry, direct heat an ordinary stove cannot deliver. Anyone who would rather have one large cut of meat or a whole fish than many small plates is as well served here as at the tapeo. A family-run house in Cala Major The place is run as a family business, and you notice it first at the door: guests describe again and again how personally they are greeted and how quickly a reserved table turns into a conversation. The mood in the evening is lively and Spanish rather than touristic — no small thing in this part of Palma, where many houses are set up for hotel guests. Facing the street there is a terrace with its own menu, the better seat on a warm evening. Because word about the house has spread among locals and returning holidaymakers alike, booking through its own online reservation page is the safer option — especially if you are coming as a group or want to sit outside.