Nirador

Nirador sits in the middle of the Bulevar de Peguera, the pedestrian street the whole resort runs along. It is one of the smaller places in a row where operators change often — and one of the few in Peguera you still know by name. The name is written Nirador in some places and Nirad'or in others; it is the same house either way. Behind it stands one person. Nicole Stange, Nicki to her guests, is a trained cook and was head chef at La Vida in the same resort before running her own restaurant since 2020. She cooks herself, and she is the face of the house — in a place where guests come back year after year, that is not a side note but the core of the business. What comes to the table is decided in the morning. She buys the ingredients personally, and what becomes of them ends up on a daily card you ask the staff about. Alongside it, the menu carries its surroundings: because Peguera is Peguera, a Schnitzel or a Currywurst turns up between the house's own dishes. The kitchen still calls itself international rather than German. What comes to the table at Nirador The base is Mediterranean, fish carries real weight, and over it lies an Asian hand that Nicole Stange brings back from her travels. It shows most clearly wherever the work is raw: salmon carpaccio Asia style, salmon tartare with ponzu, a ceviche, a tataki on sweet potato cream. Sashimi, cut to order, belongs to it too — an unusual claim for a restaurant on a resort boulevard. The warm plates are more classical. Gambas al ajillo come in olive oil with garlic and chilli; the risotto appears once with asparagus and a fish fillet wrapped in Serrano ham, once with wild mushrooms and truffle oil. Among the poultry, an Asian glass-noodle salad with tempura chicken sits next to a chicken in vitello tonnato style, with a burrata and peach alongside. The spread is deliberate: two people eating here do not have to agree on one cuisine. The Themenmontag The best-known institution of the house is the Themenmontag, its themed Monday. One single theme then carries the entire card, from the starters through to the main courses, and the theme changes from time to time: everything around salmon, around the gamba, around chicken, risotto, Schnitzel or spare ribs, plus paella and tortilla española — and an evening that goes to Greece from start to finish. The Greek evening shows best how seriously it is meant. It begins with a farmer's salad and gratinated feta with herbs and warm pita bread, runs on through whole grilled fish with lemon potatoes, braised lamb shank with feta-filled gnocchi and homemade bifteki, and ends at moussaka and a spanakopita dürüm with leaf spinach, feta and dill. The gyros plate comes with chicken and equally in a vegetarian version — vegetarian cooking here is not a token line at the bottom of the menu. The salmon evening goes the other way: carpaccio, tartare, ceviche, a poke bowl with quinoa, fried salmon in coconut curry, Asian noodles, a salmon burger and an Indonesian salad with peanut sauce all stand on the same card. Anyone who has caught a Themenmontag once understands quickly why regulars make a note of it. Nirador and the Peguera boulevard Peguera belongs to the municipality of Calvià and lies on the southwest coast, a good twenty kilometres west of Palma. The resort has been German-influenced for decades: cafés, ice cream parlours and restaurants line the boulevard, and signs for Bratwurst and Grillhaxe belong to the picture as much as the three sandy bays that close the place off towards the water. Eating well here means choosing well — the quality varies sharply. It is in exactly that setting that Nirador has built a reputation of its own. When kabel eins brought its restaurant show Mein Lokal, Dein Lokal to Mallorca for its anniversary episode, Nirad'or opened the island run; the broadcaster described the house as being as colourful in taste as it is to look at. Guests have been coming from beyond the resort ever since. A table is worth booking in advance, in high season all the more so — the house is small, and the recommendation comes from the owner herself.