Origen tapas concept l Restaurante de tapas Palma

Origen Tapas Concept sits on Plaça Nova de la Ferreria, a small square in the middle of Palma's old town, and carries its brief in its name: every dish should have a starting point, a flavour you already know, and then take one step beyond it. The kitchen cooks Spanish tapas, but with contemporary technique and no shyness about borrowing from Asia and Latin America. Strictly speaking, the most important ingredient here is not an ingredient at all but the fire. Meat and fish go over the brasa, the open charcoal embers, and the rice dishes get their finish there too. Much of it is cooked slowly at low temperature first and only pulled over the embers at the end — which is why a piece of meat here tastes of smoke without drying out. Eating is a shared business. Plates go to the middle of the table, and the menu is built so that an evening grows out of them rather than a sequence of courses. The menu: Tierra, Verde, Mar and Cielo Origen sorts its dishes by origin rather than by course. Tierra holds what comes from the land: lacquered pork ribs, pluma ibérica from the charcoal grill, entrecôte and a large aged chuletón, steak tartare from old-cow beef, alongside chicken croquettes with curry, a bao with beef, red cabbage and mango chutney, and a cannelloni of Mallorcan suckling pig with apple cream. The brioche named after the house, which also goes over the embers, is filled with oxtail, truffled mayonnaise and pickled onion. Verde is the vegetable side and considerably more than a side-dish section: bravas with chipotle mayonnaise and allioli, burrata with confit tomatoes and pistachio, grilled artichoke with parmesan and guanciale, Padrón peppers with grated orange, a tartare of Mallorcan tomato and avocado, and gyoza with seasonal vegetables. Mar shows how far this kitchen travels: meagre ceviche in coriander leche de tigre, tuna tataki with sesame oil, salmon tartare with avocado and mango, fried baby squid, queen scallops off the embers, a rice with octopus and scallop, and a whole wild sea bass from the fire. Cielo is the sweet side — torrijas with vanilla ice cream, a creamy cheesecake, a chocolate volcano, mascarpone cream with banana and dulce de leche, and a tres leches cake in which the house's Latin American streak comes through most clearly. Island wines and cocktails The wine room is not an afterthought. Alongside Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Rueda, Rías Baixas and Valdeorras, the list carries a striking number of island wines: Manto Negro, Callet and Prensal Blanc from Binissalem, from the Pla i Llevant and under the Mallorca designation. Anyone who wants to know what Mallorcan wine can do these days will find a selection here that shows it. There is also a cocktail list of the house's own signature drinks, one of them named after the restaurant. Who is behind Origen Tapas Concept The restaurant has been open since 2021 and was the first of the group that has grown out of it. Andy Suárez, who comes from Havana, runs the house as general manager. The same group includes Salvaje on the nearby Plaça de la Quartera, which works along Japanese lines, and La Guarida, with meat from the brasa and Brazilian-Japanese fusion. For Origen itself the original brief still stands: Spanish tapas, local produce, open fire.